A big thanks to everyone who showed up in the cold this morning to help out with my Nore Clean up event. It was lovely to meet with like minded people, particularly those who are new to Kilkenny and feel as strongly as I do about the presence of plastic and other toxic materials in our natural environment. Also hats off to my colleague on the Borough Council, Betty Manning for helping out.
We collected a big triailer with over thirty bags, traffic cones, bins, trolleys, and a bong! No, I didn’t keep it! We also had help from Elaine Bradshaw from KKB and a lovely gentleman from Kilkenny Water Safety. The canoe club couldn’t make it but have offered to help out on the next one.
I was talking as we were cleaning to a guy from Philadelphia, Brian was his name. Anyway, he was blown away by the river and its setting. He’s just moved here with his family and he loves Kilkenny, thats encouraging to those of us who are here so long and sometimes despair at our collective lack of ambition and vision for this city.
After we’d done, we had a cuppa and some of Liam Scotts homemade Cadburys cakes. There was a general consensus that we’d all like to do this on a regualar basis. I missed doing these things, it was all I did when I was in Earthwatch and I loved all that activist stuff. Hey, and that was during a recession too! Also I had watched a horrific documentary during the week about the volumes of plastic in the marine environment. It is literally decimating marine life and by default as the last link in the food chain, us as well. I’m making it my goal to continue to remove as much plastic from my local environment as possible. Its simple, just pick as ye go, put it in your pocket and bring it home for recycling.
Enough ranting. I’m not just posting press releases on this site now by the way, the rants are going up too. My IT Guy (congrats on becoming a daddy, Paul!) said I need a facebook, Bebo and Myspace! I haven’t time, might do a myspace for the music though Mal