Reducing emissions, increasing biodiversity

Castlegregory Summer Festival is Ireland's longest-running village festival and has been held in July every year since 1948. This year, there's an incredible line-up including a Watersports Fittest Family Competition, Bingo, a Colour Run, Poi Dance Circle, a Qi Gong taster, Sandcastle Competition, Yoga, Family Fun Day, an exhibition celebrating Castlegregory, Wildflower walk, a Pet Competition, an Egg Case ID event in association with Maharees Conservation Association and Louise Overy of Irish Elasmobranch Group, and many, many more events for all the family.

This year, the festival will include new nature-based events in their program, will be operating their Colour Run as a carbon-free solar powered event, and have incentivised zero-emissions entries in the parade with a human-powered Go Kart competition.

Dingle Lit is the annual Dingle Literary festival that's on from Friday 15th to Sunday 17th November. During the festival, Dingle will be packed with workshops and events for adults and children, with a huge roster of local and visiting writers.

For Dingle COP, Dingle Lit have pledged to reduce the number of brochures printed for this year’s festival by 40% and they'll continue with this initiative next year to look at further ways to reduce their environmental impact. Also this year, they'll feature the winning entries for their inaugural short story competition in the brochure, and will save paper by including a short intro for each winner alongside a QR code that readers can scan to read the story online.

Dingle Printing have already taken measures to reduce their electricity usage and always avoid single-use items like water bottles and cups. They use paper produced in the EU from FSC certified resources or Euro Eco label for most of their work, and have pledged to increase this to 95% of their paper projects by November. They will also further reduce electricity usage by turning off equipment when not in use.

Lovely cafe Seed and Soul already offer plant-based food and natural hemp products. For Dingle COP, they have pledged to reduce single-use items by offering 2GoCups and 2GoBowls for their drinks, smoothie bowls, and salads. How does it work? Customers put down a deposit of €2 for a cup or €3 for a bowl, and can return them after use to any participating cafe and get their deposit back or swap them for a new 2Go cup/bowl. Seed and Soul also plan to offer reusable smoothie/iced coffee cups this summer. Learn more about 2GoCups here.