SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. The corporation employs c1700 people in Ireland with the Galway operation located at Parkmore East.

Helping the world run better and improve people’s lives is the guiding principle to their business strategy. SAP has a very strong proactive corporate sustainability, health, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) portfolio, believing social, environmental, and economic activities and performance are interrelated – each impacting the others. To ensure that it operates within planetary boundaries, the company acts as both an enabler and an exemplar.

As an enabler, it provide products and services that meet the purpose and sustainability challenges and opportunities of its customers. As an exemplar, it leads by example in their own sustainable business operations and practices.

Globally, SAP focuses on three main strategic areas: Climate Change, Circular Economy and Equality for All.

Further information on SAP’s Sustainability, health, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be obtained here.

SAP’s Green Team in Ireland and Galway strives towards achieving zero waste and carbon neutrality promoting recycling/reuse in areas such as coffee cups to electronic waste, providing a series of regular eco-talks for personnel on topics such as beekeeping and cycle-to-work scheme to growing one’s own food; organising community events such as beach clean-ups. In Galway they have become the first corporation to transform the familiar green sterile lawns that are so common in business parks, into wildflower meadows for bees and other pollinators.

Check out their video below on the development of meadow which includes Liam Ryan, Managing Director SAP Ireland,  speaking on the corporation’s commitment to sustainability and to the Galway National Park City initiative. 

The NUI Galway Community and University Sustainability Partnership (CUSP) team was established in 2015 to make NUI Galway a leading green, smart and healthy campus. Its  multidisciplinary team of students, staff and community partners are all working together with the common aim of showcasing how the university can become a role model for the transition to a more sustainable future. Using a Learn-Live-Lead approach organised around 6 key themes (Research and Learning, Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Nature and Ecosystems, Health and Wellbeing, Built Environment and Governance and Leadership) CUSP is striving to embed sustainability across the university mission. The Learn-Live-Lead model recognises the key role that students play in advancing the sustainability agenda. The model places students at the heart of the sustainability journey and promotes sustainability scholarship environmental stewardship and global citizenship as key student attributes.

In 2020 CUSP launched the draft NUI Galway Sustainability Strategy 2020-2025 for campus and community wide consultation. Through the active participation of all sections of the university family, NUI Galway seeks to go beyond what was laid out in its inaugural strategy.

Read the draft document at  http://www.nuigalway.ie/sustainability/strategy/

Galway’s Corporate Sector:  Five Decades of Environmental Action in the city that could last 500 years

Since their arrival to Galway in the early 1970s, the corporate sector has actively engaged with the wider community of the city and the country through sponsorship of sporting events, cultural festivals  and charitable causes. One of the most renowned benefactors was Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the second largest computer manufacturing company in the world for many decades and opened its main European base at Mervue in 1971 later expanding to a larger premises at Ballybrit. The company continued operations in Galway until the mid 1990s when it was taken over by Compaq which itself was later bought out by HP who still operate from an enlarged Ballybrit building complex.

To celebrate the five hundred year centenary of Galway being awarded city status by an English monarch, in 1984 DEC paid for and designed a large park in Salthill that they donated to the city for the benefit of its older inhabitants. This “Digital Senior CItizens’ Park” was laid out with a network of footpaths, benches, a large pond complete with sculpture, fountain and foot bridge as well as a range of exotic trees. It later became known as the Quincentenary Park. After a number of years of neglect,  a large part of this green facility was transformed by Denis and Martina Goggin into the wonderfully uplifting Circle of Life stone park within the Quincentenary Park which was additionally provided with small wildflowers meadows, trees and a revamped pond by Galway City Council. Last year, it deservedly achieved Green Flag status and has become one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations.

During its construction in 1984, DEC buried a large time capsule in the park that was covered by a large monolith stone reminiscent of a prehistoric era.  Fifth year students of the city’s Presentation Convent College won a nationwide competition organised by DEC to choose a list of items that would be placed in the time capsule reflecting life in the Ireland of 1984. Among the buried treasures chosen by the teenagers of the Pres were music by the British pop groups Eurythmics and Spandau Ballet, a Rubik’s cube, reports on the international rules game between Ireland and Australia, a toothbrush, a set of x-rays, and an RTÉ News bulletin.