Library of Community Stories
Community Stories Library
Bounce Back Recycling: a lesson from Ireland’s ‘original recyclers’
Bounce Back Recycling (BBR) is a Traveller-led social enterprise that breaks down mattresses and bulky furniture by hand so their materials can be reused or recycled instead of having to be landfilled or incinerated. It brings together environmental aims (shifting bulky waste into the circular economy) with social goals (training and employing people from the Traveller community).
Farming Rathcroghan Scheme – Sustainable Farming in an Archaeological Landscape
The Farming Rathcroghan EIP project gives advice and support to farmers in the local area on how to farm in an historically important landscape, to look after and improve the landscape, while protecting bio-diversity, carbon sequestration and improving water quality. This is important because farmers need to work with forms and rules while at the same time make a living.
Taplin’s Fields (Bridgefoot Street Park Community Garden) – from wasteland to garden
Named in honour of a local community activist Richard Talpin, Taplin’s Fields is a community garden in Bridgefoot Street Park in the heart of Dublin in The Liberties. It changed what was once a run-down, overgrown site into a shared green space where local people grow vegetables, fruit, wildflowers, and where they can also experiment in biodiversity.
Carrickmacross Toy Library
This is a volunteer-led, non-profit toy-lending service that is about reducing waste and over-consumption of toys by allowing people who mind and care for children to borrow toys instead of having to buy new ones. The toys are also carefully chosen to be as sustainable as possible and many are ‘pre-loved’
Pocket Forests – bringing nature into towns
Pocket Forests works on restoring biodiversity, soil health, and community connection by making small, dense plantings of native trees and shrubs in built up areas. They use the ideas from the Miyawaki or “Tiny Forest” approach. They also use permaculture to make richer and healthier soil that has become poor by being neglected. Since 2020, more than 100 pocket forests have been planted around Ireland.
Burrenbeo Trust
Set up as a charity in 2008, Burrenbeo Trust is a non-profit organisation that connects all of us to our places and our role in caring for them. Based in the Burren, Burrenbeo Trust works to raise awareness of the importance of the Burren, and to encourage local communities to act as carers of its priceless heritage. Building on lessons learned over the past twenty years, Burrenbeo also supports ‘place-based learning’ across Ireland as a way that communities can learn more about their place and their role in actively caring for it.
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