Carrigaline Tidy Towns is organised and run by a committee who are passionate and proud of the place they live in. The hard work and dedication of this committee and volunteers has resulted in continuous improvements to the local townscape. Our success has spanned three bronze awards, two silver awards in 2015 and 2016, and our very first gold medal award in 2017. A great deal of planning, preparation and hard work resulted in these achievements. In 2017, we also won the National Clean Air award, the Local Authority Pollinator Award and a prize at the Muintir na Tíre awards night for a renovation project on the Main Street.
Works are currently being undertaken to further extend our successes and next year is filled with further programmes and projects. Some of this year’s projects included enhancements on the Main Street (new planters/more colour on the Main Street), tree planting of native species in the town as part of National Tree Week and a new Biodiversity garden was established in the park with pollinator friendly planting. We helped establish edible community gardens, further enhanced the old citizens information building in Owenabue Carpark , and ran a zero-packaging lunch day in the local schools. The new seated area “Bumblebee Plaza” was enhanced on the Main Street, as part of our commitment to the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan. We also participated in the Council’s Streetscape Painting and Signage Improvement Scheme which saw some buildings on the Main Street get a facelift.
2018 has spawned a plethora of new additional initiatives for Carrigaline Tidy Towns. We updated our Heritage Map and created a Youtube clip which illustrated a number of the heritage sites in and around Carrigaline town, with welcomed help from Howard Crowdy. We recently introduced a Community Herb Garden on Main Street, a simple recycled pallet hosting a range of planted herbs. A proud and sentimental project saw the establishment of a seating area in the park, an amenity in memory of our Treasurer John Crowley. We held a ‘stop food waste’ four weeks workshop last November and a schools poster competition in May in the Carrigaline Court Hotel. Carrigaline Park now proudly hosts a dog poo bin and bag dispenser, a facility which was much needed in the area.
The efforts of volunteers are now recongised on a national level with SuperValu filming their promotional advertisements for tidy towns in and around the town in April; RTE and social media campaign featuring some of our volunteers. In addition to this Barry Collins SuperValu have afforded Tidy Town the platform to promote current initiatives in their own store, example of which include the distribution of wildflower seeds to local residents, a plastic awareness day where customers were given the opportunity to discard their plastics wrapping, thus highlighting the growing concern of excessive plastic packaging from manufacturers and most recently the introduction of biodegradable fruit and vegetable bags which have far reaching positive implications for our environment.
Our Reduce/Reuse/Reimagine campaign was a great success and awards will be presented in the next few weeks. The Private Garden Competition is currently ongoing, where owners are invited to submit their garden as an example of what individual households can achieve within their own space. There are many different awards types, from container gardens, to large gardens, presented on the night in November in the Carrigaline Court Hotel. In June, we hosted 46 Johnson & Johnson employees from all over the world as part of a corporate social responsibility programme.
We are delighted to witness a large increase in the number of volunteers this year, a team that has worked tirelessly to ensure that Carrigaline reaches its potential. This team have worked hard on the Cork County Anti-litter league competition, the results of which will be announced in August; we are currently in first place after round 2. This involved picking up 1000s of cigarette butts and pieces of litter all around the town over a four week period.
Our success to date would not have been possible without the help and assistance of the clubs, schools, local businesses, residents’ associations and Tús workers. We would especially like to thank the Council for the funding we receive each year and Barry Collins SuperValu, our main sponsor. We have a great relationship with the members in County Hall and with our local Council office here in Carrigaline.
In 2017, we surpassed our previous year’s result in the National Town Competition by an increase of 7 marks. We will be hoping that the projects undertaken in 2018 will further improve our marks aiding our endeavour to win the National Tidy Towns County Award for Cork South; a coveted prize currently in the hands of our neighbours Ballincollig Tidy Towns with a very narrow gap of 14 marks separating us.
The foundation and success of any Tidy Towns group is cemented in the effort, time and energy that volunteers selflessly give to enhancing and improving their own town. We are blessed in Carrigaline with an INCREDIBLE team of volunteers, without whom the above initiatives would not be possible – Thank you!
Carrigaline has the potential to compete with the very best of Irish towns and there is no reason why we could not, one day, win the overall national Award, winning the title of “Irelands Tidiest Town”.
Liam O’Connor
Chairman – Carrigaline Tidy Towns
087 7817857
www.carrigalinetidytowns.com
Twitter: @CarrigalineTT
Facebook: Carrigaline Tidy Town
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