Swords Tidy Towns volunteers helping Fingal County Council to launch Dublin Community Clean-Up event taking place from the 11th to the 19th of September 2021.

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Fortunately, this year’s Best Presented Business Frontage Competition went ahead, although it had to be scaled back and carried out in different way because of Covid-19. The judging of the competition was performed over a few weeks commencing early August. Two STT members  (Georgy Hughes and Matt Cullen) judged the competition and the awards were presented on the 9th September to the worthy winners, which were as follows:

STT/FHS Best Presented Business Frontage:

First Place:  Cupcakes and Counting who were awarded the STT/FHS Perpetual Cup and Gold Standard Certificate for their efforts. Well done and congratulations to Jenny Rojas from Cupcakes and Counting!

Second Place: Hair’s Another Salon who were awarded the Silver Standard Certificate for their efforts. Well done and congratulations to Katie and Kristine from Hair’s Another Salon!

Third Place: McNamara’s Pharmacy who were awarded the Bronze Standard Certificate for their efforts. Well done and congratulations to all the staff at McNamara’s!

A special thanks to the Fingal Horticultural Society (FHS) for kindly supplied the certificates.

Swords Tidy Towns had organised another very successful River Ward cleanup in August this year to mark the Water Heritage Day 2021. Watch the video below to see some of our captured moments from that day.

#WaterHeritageDay2021 #rivercleanup #communityeffort

In February 2020, Swords Tidy Towns had commissioned a combined Biodiversity Management Plan and Point Source Investigative Assessment of the Ward and Broadmeadow Rivers running through Swords. The goal of this investigation was to have a record of the wildlife in and surrounding the rivers running through Swords; get recommendations on how to manage and enhance biodiversity in the area; to learn of the sources of pollution flowing into the rivers in Swords, and to receive recommendations of possible mitigating actions.

On Saturday 15th of May we had our annual river clean-up. Despite the light rain in the morning we had a fantastic turnout. We had four teams deployed at different locations – two people in the water and two on the banks of River Ward in each team. We had volunteers joining us from other local groups including “Swords Pickers”, “Lions Club Swords and David Dodd from Climate Action Regional Office. Due this phenomenal community support we had managed to cover a very extensive length of our river. Our thanks as always goes to Fingal County Council Operations team for a very prompt removal of all the rubbish pulled out from the river.

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“A WaterBlitz is a FreshWater Watch activity for the whole community. Usually hosted over one weekend, members of the public can sign up to receive a free water testing kit and become citizen scientists by testing a water body local to them. The data collected by hundreds of people over this same time period gives us an accurate and comparable snapshot of water health within a region.” (FreshWater Watch, 2021)

This year WaterBlitz event was held on the 7th-10th of May, 2021 in Thames Valley, Dublin, Paris and Luxembourg. Dublin event was coordinated by the DCU Water Institute.

Swords Tidy Towns took a chance to participate in this Citizen Science initiative. Four teams have been organised to test five different locations of our local River Ward. It has been a very fun and educational experience for our volunteers, and we’re hoping to continue our participation in WaterBlitz events in the years to come.

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We have been extremely busy litter picking during the month of March – these numbers speak for themselves! Well done to our all fantastic volunteers!

#KeepingSwordsTownBeautiful #BinIt #leavenotrace #cleanup #litteringsucks #stoplittering

Enjoy the newest poem by our Swords Tidy Towns Chairperson and take a look at our new poster designed to tackle the problem of discarded face masks around the town.

The Litter Slob
By Ken Duffy
 
Have you seen the litter, left by litter slobs
No respect for others, environmental yobs
Baskets hanging, with a multitude of colour
Planters on Streets, they couldn't be fuller
Countrywide, Tidy Towns do what they can
Out in all weather, are this volunteer clan
In Hi-Vis, they sweep, crop and clean
In towns and villages, efforts can be seen
Asking for nothing, they toil each day
Picking up rubbish, keeping weeds at bay
Graffiti nationwide, has gotten out of hand
Adds to the workload, of this working band
Never losing heart, continuing with a smile
No matter how high, our rubbish does pile
If you see them out, say doing a great job
Good luck in the battle, against the litter slob

To celebrate the National Tree Week 2021, Swords Tidy Towns in collaboration with Swords Woodland Association had organised a tree art competition for the local children.

The competition has been a huge success and we were overwhelmed with the amount of entries received. Our thanks goes to everyone who entered and a special thank you to our three judges – it was not an easy task. You can see and admire the winning entries in the galleries below.

In the 6-12 years age group, the judges have also decided to award two merit awards. 1st Prize Sarah Onwuegbusi – 100 Euro voucher, 2nd Prize M. Rashim Bangash – 50 Euro voucher, 3rd Prize Amelia Ciurylo – 25 Euro voucher. Merit Award Aria Kelly – 20 Euro voucher, Merit Award Amy Wembridge – 20 Euro voucher.

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Here are the wining entries of the Tree art competition in the 13-18 year old age group. 1st Prize Jessica Geraghty – 100 Euro voucher, 2nd Prize Adam Hezam – 50 Euro voucher, and 3rd Prize Eve McMahon – 25 Euro voucher.

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Everyone who entered had received this beautiful a poster from the Swords Woodlands Association.