Kilkenny groups show that small steps can have a big impact on climate change

Community groups all over the county achieved dramatic reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, by making small changes to their everyday lifestyles.

A total of 19 local Kilkenny based groups took part in the first ever national ‘Climate Heroes’ competition and they achieved a total saving of 8,500 kg of CO2e emissions. This is the equivalent of the CO2 captured by 141 trees growing for 10 years! All achieved in a six week period.

Saving more than 68 kg of CO2 per person was a marvellous effort by our civil society groups, showing that individual actions and small changes to behaviour can result in a wonderful, eco-friendly, community outcome.

Top up child benefit to over 11,000 children in Kilkenny to be paid tomorrow

The Climate Heroes challenge competition is an initiative of Global Action Plan, involving 68 community groups from around Ireland. It is the first national climate competition for community groups in Ireland, aiming to show how simple measures by individuals can help to reduce their climate footprint on a daily basis – both at home, in their free time and at work.

Keep Kilkenny Beautiful Sustainable Energy Community launched the event at their Earth Day Celebrations in April. Launching the Challenge, Minister Malcolm Noonan said “The people of Kilkenny want to see action on climate change and the degradation of nature. People want to act and they want to know how they can help. The Climate Hero’s Challenge shows us how everyday actions can make an enormous difference if we get together and all do our best”

Cllr Maria Dollard, Chair of KKB praised all the groups who took part. “The App was a great help to show us how everyday actions like buying a service rather than new goods saves a huge amount of emissions as does working from home, not filling the kettle needlessly or repairing something instead of throwing it away, all make a big difference. Small changes to our behaviour make big changes to our emissions. There is no one silver bullet for reducing emissions. Everyone can contribute and often you find it saves money. Kilkenny’s community groups were quick to take up the challenge, and they did the county proud. The actions taken by our citizens will have a lasting impact and hopefully be the catalyst for other local groups to follow. Leadership is emerging from our community and this is so heartening” 

For more information about the Climate Heroes challenge, see https://globalactionplan.ie/blogs/ireland-has-many-climate-heroes/