The Search for Ireland’s Top Eco Mum
Win a Weekend Away At Glenribbeen Eco Lodge
To celebrate Mothers Day on March 18th Purchase.ie has teamed up with Glenribbeen Eco Lodge in Lismore Co Waterford to offer you the chance to win a weekend trip for two at this wonderful tranquil accommodation.
Prize includes the much talked about Glenribbeen breakfast on both morning (Check out the breakfast reviews here on Tripadvisor) and a free archery lesson.
The only terms and conditions is that the winner will have to avail of the weekend away during the months of March, April or July of this year. Other than that it is open to everyone.
So do you know who swears by the term reduce, reuse, recycle?
Does anyone give you lectures about your unsustainable lifestyle?
Do you know someone who got a crush on Duncan Stewart?
Is your mother the Queen of Green?
To enter the competition simply tell us why you or the person you are nominating is Ireland’s most Eco Mum! We will announce the winner on Friday March 16th
Winner Draw March 16th
Nominating myself as I try to be eco friendly.
I recycle, i feed my worms and i use geothermal heating to heat my house.
I think I’m Ireland’s Eco Mum. We live right beside a lake so I’m very concsious of what we’re putting in the water. I use old fashioned ways of cleaning like lemon juice and bicarb of soda to clean my house. Vinegar leaves my windows sparkling! I try to find another use for everything. Old loo roll holders are turned into pots for my seedlings. Used tea bags I dig into the soil to enrich it. I use my eggs shells to make my roses bloom brighter! Old wooden palattes are now nailed together and are the perfect home for my pumpkins! I grow just about all my veggies. I want to show my kids that veggies come from the ground and not a plastic bag in the shop. I save up all my old newspapers and cardboard. I layer them on my raised beds then put horse manure on top. This is the perfect way to stop the weeds coming through and it leaves the soil enriched come spring time!
Even our kids have gotten in on the act they make sure all the lights are turned off when not in use! We use energy saving devices in our house.We use the Electricity Monitoring Socket from your website and it’s really made us aware of the power we consume. We also bought the paper shredder and I shred old paper and use on the compost heap and for bedding for our chickens. One of our favourite gadgets is the Chimney Balloon & Inflation Tube. When you’re living in a 200 year old thatched cottage this was essential. It’s elemented all the draughts coming down our chimey so we’re not only nice and cosy but we’re saving energy! The eco balls were also a great discovery as we hated using conventional washing powder that was going straight into the lake beside us. The eco balls clean just as well as washing powder and they’re better on my pocket!
We’re not perfect but we’re trying our best and every year we’re getting closer to living that complete Eco Lifestyle. Now where is that sheep gone it’s time to mow the lawns!
My mother took recyclying to dizzy heights long before it was ever popular. There is a lot of waste generated in running the family business (guest house) but mother produces just one black sack of waste bi-weekly as every scrap possible is recycled or composted. She makes her own jam every year from the family crop of blackcurrents (yum!) reusing the same jars every year. Recently she has taken up gardening and now has a salad garden, cabbages and spuds from her own back garden. Always on the hunt for a bargain she is a keen charity and 2nd hand book store shopper. My mother makes being ecologically sound a way of life and at age 66 I think this is pretty cool. What I really admire is that this is just her way of life which her family does it’s best to emulate.
Well i was brought up to be eco friendly there was thirteen in family.
I am nominating my Mam as she is Eco friendly in every possible way in her day to day life. She will recycle every household item that can and should be recycled. It is a natural reaction for her these days!
My mother is the Queen of Green,
She has two compost bins – one for the tea leaves she uses as she does’nt use tea bags,
the other for fruit and vegetables peelings, this is besides the big green bin for all newspapers and magazine and plastic.
now while i nominate my mother as recycler of the year
if this poem wins the prize its me that will go i fear
she’d be too busy anyway sorting out the right thing for each bin
She would condsider to get it wrong would be a mortal sin
paper must go in the green bin or recycle sack
glass bottles to the recycle centre must be taken back
she makes sure that everything is cleaned and ready to go
her tireless effort i must my appreciation show
the enviroment is a little safer for the efforts of my dear mum
so lets hope others take it up and not just sit on their bum
my wife would be in my humble opinion be an eco mum…
for example we have a baby on the way and she has no problem in acepting used baby clothes..or anything that can be reused from her nieces/nephews kids who have grown beyond baby stage..
she also does all her home baking on an old fashioned solid fuel cooker, she spreads the ashes around the fruit trees in the garden ..ash if rich in potash which fruit trees thrive on..
she also plans to use old fashioned nappies…wash and use again type…
and she insists on drying all her washed clothes on an old fashioned clothes line..
When the baby is born she also plans to breastfeed him/her..
I could go on..I think that she is fantastic as a wife and and eco mum..
my mam is the best recycler I know..and often gives out to me for “contaminating” her recycling bin with products I would classify as recycleable!!!
Mam is in her 70’s and my nieces(ages 3 & 5) nearly put me to shame with their knowledge.
Mam started with a list on the wall when reycyling was first introduced…now…its second nature.
Id love to spoil my mam with this prize as she’s done an amzing job of rearing us (5 kids.eldest 44…baby is 25) and now she’s nurturing the environment by being the trashheap extraordinaire!
How green is my Mam(Tess Drudy) Emerald Green!
I’m an eco mum who believes in recycling everything – even sawdust, turfmould, horse droppings (from passing horses). My hubby believes in wearing his old clothes for donkey’s years – sees no need to replace any of these beloved treasures with smart new ones. He wants me to wash the clothes in the river that runs at the end of the garden.!! I use lemon juice to shine the brasses and never ever would kill a fly with flyspray. I open the window instead. Even the infestation of queen ants were gently shooed out the window and door. I pick up litter, light the stove with scrunched up newspaper, feed the birds diligently and am a saint eco-wise. I definitely deserve this break as I love living on this beautiful earth and doing my little bit to respect nature.
My mam is a great eco-mam. Like many others have said already in their posts she was being eco-friendly long before people really knew what that was. I always remember glass jars being cleaned to an inch of their life and if not delivered to the bottle bank, being used to start of a shoot of a plant or to be filled with water when we were painting. Flora tubs were also scrubbed, labelled, and used to start vegetable seeds that were transferred eventually to the ground. She has also been growing her own “organic” veg from a long time before it was cool to do so or even before people were using the word “organic”. I think in primary school I was the only one who knew what a compost heap was.
However, all of that is true to a lot of people. What really gives my mam the eco-mum edge however is the fact that she has been inadvertently educating the local primary school about being “green”. I am a local primary school teacher and when I started my job poor and penniless and needing to buy supplies, my mother made it her mission to point out how many of these supplies were items that could be recycled from the home. Used mushroom trays were cleaned and used as mixing trays for paint. Newspapers were kept and used for covering tables. Yogurt pots were cleaned and depending on size used for paint or as pencil tubs. When I wanted to buy items for a maths “sorting” lesson our jar of spare buttons were produced. My childhood became my adult life as she produced classic children’s books for my class library – Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton.. in perfect condition that she had stored lovingly in the attic. My brothers lego made it to the maths construction corner. My tea-set makes up the role-play corner along with the dolls house that actually belonged to her when she was small.
The children in my classes through the years have loved it. They love knowing the toys have a story and imagining me as a little girl and as an adult with a mammy who looks after my toys! They like that their pencil tubs are that bit different and parents in the school have commented on how great it is. I think a bit of her rubbed off on me as I now run the “Green Schools Committee” in school, and we are proud to be the only infant school in Dublin going for their fourth flag!
However, most of all my mum deserves this prize for being a mum. She works so hard and always puts us first even when she is exhausted. I would love to surprise her with a trip away. PICK MY MUM FOR ECO-MUM!
I’m nominating myself as one of my daughters has emigrated to Vancouver and the other is too busy studying for a Masters in Dublin! I try to Beas green as I can. I have free range hens who live in my kitchen garden where I grow my own vegetables. I feed my hens and my plants organically and I am currently planting trees and hedges on my land to increase the quality of the Eco system around me, to attract birds and to provide shelter for the Irish hares that live nearby. I have bee-friendly plants in my pots and around the garden. I have a large composer which I am currently filling up to make my own compost. I recycle and reuse as much as I can and notice that my refuse has got smaller and smaller as I do this successfully. And I use natural cleaners as much as possible in my home. I know I need to do more as it is critical for the earth and I will!
My mother (and father) started recycling long before it was ever popular/available. I am 34 and the youngest of 3 – all my life we recycled, up-cycled, passed-on etc. They composted despite not having anywhere to use the compost but gave the compost to a friend of theirs that was and still is an avid gardener.
When we were growing up she rallied against the local council’s collecting of waste bins 3 times a week … I kid you not – no recycling bin – purely 3 collections of waste! Even though it was possible to recycle glass back in the early 80’s it was not commom place – she collected all our waste glass and drove the 8 km to the glass recycling centre by the Merrion Gates.
As I said she tries to find a use for everything or a home where it will be put to use. She used to make a lot of clothes and owned an old knitting machine – after some years of not using it she spoke to a nun she met while on holiday in Spain who told her of a school somewhere in South America (Bogota I think) that would put it to good use. between them they managed to get the machine to the school! The folding table that the machine came on is still used to this day by myself in my caravan!!!
While she enjoys holidaying with me and her Grandkids in the caravan, I think she would love and deserves this break at Glenribbeen Eco Lodge.
i think i deserve to win 🙂 i am very eco friendly 🙂 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I deserve to win because I am sooooo eco friendly. I recycle everything.
My mother is DEFINITELY the Queen of Green. For years I have cursed my role as daughter of the nicknamed “walking recycling bin”, as I have endured much embarrassment over the years all thanks to her quest for a greener Ireland. I have spent sunny days digging up the vegetable patch instead of hanging out at the beach with my friends (“Shure you’ll get the same tan here anyway, I don’t know what you’re complaining about”), turned up at a school fancy dress dressed as a cardboard box amongst better homemade outfits of princesses and pirates (“I don’t know why you’re yapping on about this, there’ll be no princesses and pirates when we all die because of global warming. A cardboard box is a great costume”) and attribute the heartbreak of unrequited love at 11 years old because I was forced to cycle past his house on a 6 year old’s Barbie bike, sweaty and annoyed, because my mother refused to drive me to the local cinema (“You’ll not be cinemaing much longer if the world gets destroyed from petrol fumes”). I have built up a tolerance for it over the years, although it has resulted in many arguments in the house, a memorable one being when we almost missed a family holiday because my darling mother decided that a trip to the local recycling centre took better priority over getting checked in early at the airport. I think my mother definitely deserves to win this prize (if only to give me a weekend’s break from lectures that my likening for leaving lights on is single handedly destroying the Earth)…she’ll probably walk to Waterford and everything, those damn petrol fumes!
My mum is an eco mum and much more,as she is a stay-at-home mom works many jobs throughout the day. She’s a nurse, chauffeur, chef, teacher, playmate, housekeeper, laundry attendant, accountant and babysitter all rolled into one.She doesn’t receive a paycheck for the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week she’s on duty. But the one thing she really holds dear reduce, reuse, recycle. She Buys products with minimal packaging,recycles paper, plastic, newspaper, glass and aluminum cans. We Added insulation to our walls and attic, and installing weather stripping or caulking around doors and windows can lower your heating costs and save energy. We have ompact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and encouaged to cycle instead of using cars My Mum is the ultimate eco Mum and she loves the enovionment more than anything.
My mum deserves this as she recycles teabags when she has none left ! also she is 60 on march 9 this year and when she was 45 she survived a brain tumour,she has the huge head scar left forever but she is still with us,Love to treat her
Have to say, would have tried hard during the years to be eco-friendly. But now that i have a 12 year old and 7 year old on the Green School Committee, and have a list of the main things that they want their Mammy to do. Here is just a few:
Recycle as much as possible
Take shorter showers and baths
Dont water your lawn in the winter
Use cold water for your laundry.(There are laundry powders that do just as a good job with cold water than warm water.
Buy green products such as recycled paper, cardboard and plastic
Switch to a green source of energy(solar, wind, geothermal)
Use eco firendly lightbulbs
Encourage others to do the same
Set an example for others
With the help of the kids feel i am a very Eco- Friendly Mum indeed.
Im going to nominating my mother as she recycled years ago when it wasn’t even really heard of and was very good to grow all her own vegetables, make her jams from her berrys, and id like to treat her
I would like to nominate my sister as she is always recycling she even checks up on what i put in my bin to make sure i am recycling every thing i can !
My mom passed away but i would like to nominate my stepmom. Ever since she came in my life she has been like my best friend and has always been there for me. Understandabley it must have been hard for her to be around a teenager who was going grieving but she was so understanding.
She then gave birth to a handsome baby boy and brought the best thing into my life. I adore him and will always love her for bringing him into my life.
She is extremely eco friendly, I mean she recycles absolutely everything and if she ever seen paper or anything on the floor she’d pick it up. She even done a college course horticulture and landscaping help make the world a better place.
I really hope she wins this as she truly deserves it. Loves u babs xxx
Helena Greene as she is a very Conscious mother who tries as much as she can to look after the environment around her, by re-cycling as much as possible & teaching others to do the same. She also Grows her own Vegetables and Deserves this Break Greatly
i am nominating myself my mum passed away 10 years now and im followin in her footsteps. i give things away instead of throwing them. For example old computer equipment, magazines, furniture. Rather than producing rubbish, see if someone else might get even more use out of your old things. You’d be surprised how one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. because of my mum god rest her i always turn off and plug out 🙂 to save energy.i even now Conserve water – Take shorter showers, shut off the faucet when your brushing your teeth i prob go abit over board.recycling is also a big part of my life and i never get paper bill s i do it all on line it helps a little i hope
I buy most of my clothes second hand and have done for years now. Practice must make perfect as I often get compliments on my style 😉
I nominate myself as I am extremely eco friendly. I grow my own vegetables and fruit. I make jam and chutneys with recycled jam jars.I use the wood ash from my wood burning stove for my garden and recycle my newpapers and magazines.I have cut my land waste to the extent that I no longer use the council bins and only have a bag for landfill every 8 weeks.I have also installed a water butt and use all energy saving light bulbs. I upstyle old furniture for family and friends and joined the local library rather than buy more book. I would love a break as I haven’t one in years as I was also minding my elderly mother and aunt until recently
i nominate myself, i reuse clothes (make old clothes into new), i turn off everything after using it,because of this my esb is 40 a month,i also recycle
My mother is probably the most eco friendly person i know for countless reasons. She doesn’t believe in throwing stuff needlessly away. She always gives her old clothes to charity and won’t ever buy something new unless the old thing is totally broken. She has a vegetable patch out in our back garden and brings fresh fruit and veg to many of our elderly neighbours whenever she can, depending on when the fruit and veg is in season. She never lets us turn on the hot water needlessly and makes sure that when their is hot water from the oil having been on, that the most use is got out of it. We are also encouraged to have short showers and baths to preserve water. My mother also takes walk ever sunday evening and collects the rubbish from our local roads to make our community a better and cleaner place for everyone. These are just some of the reasons i would like to nominate my mother. She is a brilliant woman and deserves this break away for all her work and time given to the community to make it a better place.
we like to recycle that is my friends,family and myself,if theres anything left over after any meal we ring round too see can anyone use it if not its not wasted my dogs will eat it also clothes are never thrown out if they cant be passed down to family or friends they will go to a charity shop and if they are damaged i use them as cloths:)buttons and sequins and motifs are used from clothes are used for artwork for my daughters artwork and projects for school and to personlise items which gives great satifaction in knowing that you made it your yourself and its means something:)
Ireland’s No 1 Eco Mum
My mum is the ultimate queen of green. She had us recycling ever since I can remember. If something could serve another purpose it would be reincarnated as something new. Old clothes transformed to new fashionable outfits. Odd wooly gloves ripped and reknitted to make wrist warmers. my mum making nettle soup freshly picked from hedge rows. Stacks of empty chocolate and buscuit boxes stacked away for useful storage. I remember being little, i loved bringing glass jars and bottles to the bottle bank and listening to the crashing sound. My mum had us making firelighters from old newspaper to recycle them. She cut up all the old cereal boxes for shopping lists. She really instill in all of us the importance of conserving energy and recycling any thing that was possible to recycle. There were two things that encouraged my mum to recycle and be as green as possible one was to be kinder to the environment and the other was to be kinder to her pocket!
mu mum is the best she is a farmer very eco friendly
Really really difficult to pick a winner to this one. Some really well thought out replies. Shortlist went from 12 to 3
The final 3 were
Sean Thompson (On behalf of his mother)
Cathy Shelvin (On behalf of her mother)
Jamie O’Sullivan (On behalf of his mother)
Simply could not separate the 3 so the names were written down on pieces of recycled paper and inserted in a cup. One name was drawn out as the winner!
Congratulations Mrs Thompson you are the official eco mum of Ireland 2012.
Enjoy your weekend at Glenribbeen Eco Lodge
Sean you lucky devil no need to get the Mothers Day Gift now!
Email sent on to you.
Thank You all for entering and another competition will be up and running soon.
Also thank you to Peter for sponsoring this wonderful prize.
By the way the draw was recorded but Im having trouble uploading it at the moment.
Have a wonderful Paddy’s Weekend and Happy Mothers Day of course!