Frontline Bikes in Dublin’s Inchicore is “a double impact” community venture, addressing addiction and at the same time pursuing a green agenda in recycling old, rescued and donated bicycles.
Its chief executive, Stuart Fraser, believes it’s the perfect example of “circularity”, the new imperative where products are upcycled rather than dumped.
He was present at Richmond Barracks on Thursday as local community groups demonstrated their climate action credentials at an event hosted by writer and comedian Colm O’Regan. His book, Climate Worrier — a hypocrite’s guide to saving the planet, grapples with many of the difficulties and paradoxes people encounter when it comes to climate action and wishing to do the right thing.
O’Regan qualified as a Dublin 8 resident and member of Inchicore Environmental Group, one who has bought bikes from Frontline and brought some dumped in the canal to be restored by their team.
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Besides helping 300 people a year with addiction problems, Fraser says “it has caught the imagination of people because of double impact. That is why we have such a large customer base ... [and] it makes people talk about how they purchase and consume”.
He singled out four men “who were on their backsides due to addiction” some years ago, who have become four of their best mechanics. “That was the best gift for me.”
It costs €84,000 a year to keep someone in Mountjoy Prison for a year, he noted. “That same individual with me costs €21,000.”
The Pocket Forests initiative, which involves planting native trees and shrubs, started in Dublin 8 in 2020, with the premise that “if you only have fragments of ground, you need to maximise them”, said co-founder Catherine Cleary.
Such is the scale of nature loss in Ireland, with less than 2 per cent of the country covered by native woodland, that it might seem strange to concentrate on urban areas, she said. But doing so enhances pollinator populations, creates breakout places for people and changes perceptions, said Cleary, noting, for example, that elders are no longer considered “weed trees”.
In addressing the climate crisis and nature loss at community level, “we have to do lots of ‘I don’t know how to do this but just try it’“, said Cleary, who writes the Game Changers column in The Irish Times Magazine. In return, the energy of people emerges, goodwill is enhanced “and it gives us back the joy in nature”, she said.
Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan was present to hear of the local successes and to announce a new kind of national engagement and communications campaign to support and encourage collective action on climate and community resilience.
Climate Actions Work will support projects designed and developed by communities to get more people involved.
“It is about making the scale of change in all our lives, to meet the greatest challenge in our lives”, he said. The big question arising from this was why there wasn’t a commensurate response.
It may be because they were asking themselves “how do we cope with that reality?” and inspiring themselves and others to take action, he added. “The most important bit now is how we tell the story to one another.”
Central to that was community activism and change that was not a shaming or blaming process, said the Minister.
“We know Irish people care about climate change, that they are concerned about its effects on their lives,” he added, “but importantly that they believe that climate actions work — that this can make our country more resilient, help create new green jobs and opportunities and improve our quality of life.”
The campaign would build on the momentum already happening across Ireland, he said, “from bog restoration in Roscommon to community energy in Cabra. Every place and every person matters when it comes to climate.”
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