Environmental Aisling Power

This year in EnviroSoc, we held a great range of events! To name a few; Litter Picking, Bike Shed, Climate Strike, Adventure Trip to Derrynane, Voter Registration, Campus Bat Trail, Beach Clean up, Workshops in the UCC Community Garden, and many more! Some of our educational and informative talks included: ‘Fossil Foods, Carbon Opportunity Costs and Future Prospects’ with James O’Donovan from Vegan Sustainability magazine, ‘Biodiversity loss and a local and global level’ with Dr. Dara Fitzpatrick, and ‘Wild Tales From the Atlantic’ with Dr. Tom Doyle. It was so brilliant seeing such great attendance at these events, and the eagerness of students to get involved with environmentalism

A hugely notable success was Green Week, in collaboration with the Student Union and Green Campus. The SU Environmental & Sustainability rep Natasha and ourselves were busy for the week, with a wide range of inclusive events; from foraging and biodiversity walks, to informative talks on sustainability and environmentalism, to the launch of our Environmental Journal! I could spend a day listing the fantastic events which took place, all as important as each other (But I must of course mention the Big Green Quiz, which was a hit all round)

Furthermore, we began the revamp of Green Campus, which I hope to see continue to grow and develop. Green Campus is an integral part of sustainability in UCC, and it would be fantastic to have this initiative as active as possible. This year, one key contribution was the introduction of terracycle make-up bins into the Boole library.

A big thank you to everyone on the committee! I really couldn’t be more proud of our new committee members who joined this year and hit the ground running. Ye really threw yourselves in and gave it your all, and I will forever be thankful for that. It’s been so wholesome to see the new generation of EnviroSoc blossoming ahead, and I have no doubt ye are going to achieve brilliant things in the years to come. Continuing onto next year and future prospects, it would be great to see the continued development of EnviroSoc in an open, safe space for students and staff to learn about environmentalism, sustainability, and climate justice A massive thank you to everyone who’s been involved in this society along the way!