About Us

 

 






Belturbet Zero Waste (BZW)

The Belturbet Zero Waste initiative was officially launched in the Civic Centre on 27th Feb 2019 as a community-led response to climate change. We drew inspiration from Cashel, Co Tipperary, Ireland's first Zero Waste Town. Continued expertise and support have been provided by Cavan Co Council Waste Management, Connaught / Ulster Waste Region, and Dr. Vincent Carragher of Trinity College, Dublin

Our target is; 50% reduction in waste and carbon footprint over 5 years. We believe this to be an achievable goal. The starting point or baseline has been established through a locally distributed ecological footprint survey questionnaire, identifying how we already manage our resources. This was carried out during April and May of 2019, with over 1000 copies sent out. The results of this household and business survey were analysed to successfully give us our overall carbon footprint, published in July 2019.


Our Ecological Footprint

The average Ecological Footprint of Belturbet residents calculates at 3.03 global Hectares (gHa), meaning that if everyone in the world lived as the average Belturbet person, we would need 1.7 planets. The national average is 3.4 planets! But still there is a lot of room for improvement, after all there is only 1 planet that has to sustain us all.

Belturbet Zero Waste

Belturbet Zero Waste is a community-led initiative and is driven by the enthusiasm of the Belturbet community to make a real difference.If you want to know more about our upcoming workshops and our other activities, please follow our Belturbet Zero Waste Facebook page, or contact BZW team members

Spark Change Awards:

On 18th Oct 19 Belturbet Zero Waste were invited to Dublin Castle by The Wheel (Ireland's National Association of Charities, Community and Voluntary Organisations) to receive our winner's award in the inaugural "Spark Change" communicator category. We attended with pupils and parents from all the local schools. Not only had we a great evening, we were afforded the opportunity to proudly showcase our town and community initiative to policy makers.

For a very young community enterprise, Belturbet Zero Waste (BZW) have already won two National Awards! The first of these was in November 2019 in Dublin Castle, where we attended with a large group of school pupils, winning first prize in the Spark Change Awards, Communicator Category. This event is sponsored by The Wheel, Ireland's association of community and voluntary organisations and social enterprises.

The second award, on 22nd Feb, at the All Ireland Community & Council Awards 2020 in Croke Park, hosted by the Local Authority Members Association (LAMA) and IPB Insurance. This prestigious event showcased over 140 finalist entries from every County in Ireland. With 24 categories, ranging from; Best Community Health Initiative, Best Public Park, to Best Tourism Initiative, Belturbet won the Best Waste Management Programme with our Zero Waste Initiative.

These awards are really important to us, giving profile to our Zero Waste campaign on a national stage and providing encouragement to everyone in Belturbet. OUR COMMUNITY.....is doing great things and achieving national recognition through these accolades and confirms how relevant our campaign of lowering our ecological footprint really is. Winning awards is not an end in itself, rather an incentive to continue progressing

Mighty thanks to everyone who participated in last year's baseline survey. Hopefully we can expand in our 2020 survey.