Tour One: Explore Ireland’s largest Ecovillage 9am - 6pm
Cloughjordan is Ireland’s largest Ecovillage. Situated in heart of Ireland in County Tipperary, the Cloughjordan Ecovillage is a project which aims to create a community with commitments to ecological, social and economic sustainability. The first residents moved into the Ecovillage in December 2009 and have been learning how to live sustainably with much of their food grown on the Cloughjordan Community Farm using organic and biodynamic principles.
This full day tour and it will include tours featuring the community farm, sustainable urban draining system and district heating system. Lunch will be provided by local social enterprise The Night Orchard. Presentations include the integrated constructed wetland, research gardens and Riot Rye Bakery.
Tour Two: Dublin’s Circular Economy Connected Neighbourhoods 9am - 5pm
Start the day at Dublin City University (DCU), where cutting edge research into greener living is being carried out. Here you will meet Samantha Fahy, Head of Sustainability, with presentations from Dave Robbins, Diarmuid Torney and Niall O’Brien. Topics will include Growdome, Climate & Society, Intensive Urban Agriculture and the Plastics Challenge. The DCU community garden is open to all staff, students and DCU alumni and is a resource for teaching, research, education, training and community engagement.
Following this expansive look behind the scenes of DCU, you will visit nearby The Rediscovery Centre an award winning social enterprise and the National Centre for the Circular Economy in Ireland. Established in 2004, the centre brings together the skills and expertise of artists, scientists, designers and craftspeople united in a common purpose of sustainability. Located in Europe’s first circular economy demonstration centre, this reimagined space operates as a 3D textbook highlighting the opportunities of circularity within the built, natural and cultural environment. The centre acts as an innovation hub, delivering education, providing research and enabling policy and collaboration to support citizen engagement. The centre is also home to four reuse social enterprises; Rediscover Furniture, Rediscover Fashion, Rediscover Paint and Rediscover Cycling which use unwanted materials for new product development; demonstrating effective resource efficiency, reuse and low carbon living. It is located on the Northside of Dublin in the repurposed Boiler House.
Tour Three: Waste Management Reimagined: Rethink, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle 9am - 6pm
ReCreate in Ballymount on the Southside of Dublin City is a thriving social enterprise making art materials and educational supplies affordable and accessible to every sector of the community. Clean reusable materials from businesses are salvaged and redistributed to members free of charge and in unlimited quantities for creative use.
Continuing your exploration into waste management in Ireland, your next stop will be Thorntons Recycling, a company that prides itself on being one of Ireland’s most progressive and advanced recycling companies, with an impressive company recycling rate of 92% in 2022. Striving each year to increase recycling rates and ensure the maximum amount of material is fully recycled or recovered as an alternative fuel. Each month over 450,000 services are carried out to commercial (5,500) and household (75,000) customers collecting over 1,100 tonnes of recyclable materials each month from 120,000 household recycling bins. Lunch will be at The Green Kitchen and Garden Shop in nearby Walkinstown where there is a special welcome for staff members with a disability. The tour will end with a stop-off at a very exciting waste management organisation; Food Cloud, a non-profit social enterprise operating since 2013 to tackle the twin issues of food waste and food insecurity.
Tour Four: New Perspectives: Green Energy and Dublin-by-boat 9am - 5pm
Gain new perspectives on how to use the circular economy to generate energy, as well as taking in the sights of Dublin whilst observing local fauna. Dublin Waste to Energy (also known as Energy-from-Waste) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or steam from the combustion of non-recyclable residual waste. This plant provides sustainable treatment of waste that cannot be reused or recycled, converting it into renewable energy. This plant visit will demonstrate how the circular economy is supported by recovering resources from household and commercial waste that remains after recycling. Modern facilities generate baseload electricity and create hot water for district heating networks, as well as producing ash that can be turned into building materials and enabling extraction of ferrous and non-ferrous metals for reuse.
Look back to where we’ve come from, and learn more about where we are going, with two tours of Dublin, showing very different sides to the city. A Walking Tour with The Five Lamps Arts Festival to discover the history of the Dublin North Wall area, once Dublin’s Old Docklands, will take place before lunch. This is an area of the city rich in trading history. It includes areas such as George’s Dock, Spencer Dock, the Royal Canal, Famine Memorial and The Customs House.
You will cap off your exploration of Dublin on a Boat Tour on the River Liffey with historian and author Frank Hopkins as guide. You will hear fascinating tales of tall ships and pirates and spot birds and wildlife along the way – watch out for one of Europe’s largest colonies of arctic terns.
Tour Five: Live Showcase – “Do More with Less” and explore Airfield 9am - 5pm
Prepare for an engaging live project showcase from the Office of Public Works (OPW), Farrell Furniture and ATU Connemara in the morning that demonstrates circularity and innovation in action through the ‘do more with less’ collaboration where obsolete office furniture, manufactured by Farrell in the mid 2000’s, was repaired, remanufactured and then redistributed throughout the Irish public sector. A series of Irish classic chairs that are no longer manufactured, were studied and reverse engineered by ATU which allowed their repair and reuse, keeping this classic price of Irish Design in use for many years to come.
Tour Six: Grow It Yourself: Expert Advice for Green Thumbs 9am - 5.30pm
This is a full day tour to Grow It Yourself in County Waterford. Founded in 2008, GIY supports people around the world to live healthier, happier and more sustainable lives by growing some of their own food. Their mission is to educate and enable a global movement of food growers whose collective actions will help to rebuild a sustainable food system. A major TV series was aired in 2022 to inspire people to grow, cook and eat some of their own food at home, school, or work and in the community. This tour will include a cookery demonstration with Head of Food JB Dubois and a garden tour with head grower Richard Mee.
About:
The Steering Committee for Circular Economy Hotspot Dublin 2023 is a collaboration of leading organisations in the fields of circular economy and waste management, chaired by The Rediscovery Centre. The committee comprises representatives from Dublin City Council, the Eastern & Midlands Regional Waste Management Planning Office, CIRCULÉIRE and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. These experts have united to host the Circular Economy Hotspot 2023 in Dublin, with exciting events spanning over four days to raise awareness of Dublin's commitment to the circular economy.
General Info