Time travel – backwards to Environmental Innocence.

Saturday 1456 – 1st Sept 2012.

I’ve been travelling all day today and am now safely ensconced in the Trossachs.. Oh er missus!!  (sorry private joke! ) in Scotland using an internet connection that seems to have come out of the ark.. Do many of you remember dial-up? well it’s like that a bit – very slow and your allowed 20 mins slots before you get cut off and have to log on again.. I could use my little netbook but that would probably be even worse.

Anyway back to what I’m going to write about.. I seem to be on a bit of a nostalgia trip at the moment.. lots of self re-assessment/reflection going on. Last week I gave you railways, this week I’m going to talk about the start of my involvement with the Environmental movement and show you some photos from that time.. and just take a look at the hairstyles and HUGE glasses…hilarious..

These photos are from 1989-95 when I lived in the Republic of Ireland and was involved in the founding of a local group of Earthwatch, who were like the Irish equivalent of Friends of the Earth at that time.

We kept a scrapbook and when I looked through it a couple of days ago I thought how amateurish it all was but heartfelt nonetheless as a small group of us were passionate about helping to save this beautiful planet.

This was me as Chairperson giving an interview to the local paper; saying things like –

” We try to encourage a positive attitude – to think about what can be done rather than what can’t”

and me stressing the

” Importance of caution in buying ‘environmentally-friendly ‘products. People need to make sure they aren’t being conned”

and

” nothing is as powerful as consumer pressure”

I could have said all this yesterday !!

I’m not going to add too many words ( I can’t because of this blooming computer! ) but will just give you the photos from the scrapbook and obviously they’re not great quality.. there’s an understatement! as most of them are newspaper cuttings.

Here are some of the other members of the committee with Patricia McKenna  of Ireland’s Green Party with at the back my 2 dear friends Mary and Marleen who this post is really for. Love you two 😀

We were involved in many different campaigns but I’ve picked 4 of my favourites to highlight.. plastic bottles, Sellafield, can recycling and donating environmental children’s books to the library.

We laboriously joined plastic P.E.T bottles together to make a snake for a St Patrick’s Day Parade in 1992 and had our very own St Patrick to drive the snake out of Ireland ( for my overseas followers who may not know, there are no snakes in Ireland and legend has it that St Patrick drove them out ) When this photo was taken 74 Million P.E.T – The large bomb-like plastic soft drinks  bottles, were being manufactured in Ireland.

We won 1st prize for best cultural float and  £200 but I don’t recall what we did with the money specifically though either Mary or Marlene may remember.

Sellafield protest against what was a proposal at the time for a 2nd nuclear facility.

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I think Earthwatch Cavan can be proudest of the hard-fought battle to bring recycling to the town in the form of a can bank which initially was serviced by members of the groups but which was eventually taken over by a local business.  It seems hard to imagine now but at the time this was a very big thing indeed. Note much squinting into the sun !

The giving of Environmental children’s books to the local library brought me enormous personal pleasure and we did this twice – education is key..

.I’m going to leave you with this list that we had published in 1989… more important than ever before now…

Raising awareness has been a long uphill struggle which sadly has to go on and my naivity has gone.. I see now that the fight is much bigger – against governments and huge corporations but I still believe that each and everyone of us can make a difference.

Watch out for the earth – our children’s lives depend on it.

I hope you have enjoyed this little trip down memory lane and  you will think about what you might be able to do yourself for our wonderful world; especially politically as every little helps.

Do your own research but think about supporting groups like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth you won’t ever be sorry you did.

Next week’s post will almost certainly not be published until about Monday as I will probably be travelling Saturday and Sunday and may not have access to the internet.

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You can find my photography blog Photomania here I hope you’ll pop over and take a look if you haven’t already.

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