Sheila Greaney, CISCO

CISCO‘s Galway operation was the first of their locations worldwide to eliminate single use plastic in their offices. Their site in Oranmore provides personalised water bottles/mugs to each employee, installed electric car charging stations, host quarterly eWaste events, organise community clean-ups and promote environmental initiatives amongst employees’ families. In initiatives such as ‘Bring your kids to work’ – they educate the young generation on simple matters like a child’s carbon footprint going to school to ensure they think about things where they can individually and collectively make a difference but they might not have realised it.

Under a ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ ethos, volunteerism from large institutions is becoming an important element to community and environmental groups across Galway city and county. In the case of CISCO, Sheila Greaney is the Site Engagement coordinator organising staff ‘giving back’ to the community through interaction with Age Action, Cope Galway, Simon Community and many schools. The company is now one of the main sponsors and primary promoters of the Galway Science & Technology Festival.

We are all in this together. For the National Park City Galway programme to succeed, we need to reach out to everyone and to have all sectors of society involved in order to undertake actions to integrate ‘green’ and ‘blue’ (waterways) into our urban infrastructure and lives, lower carbon emissions and became part of the circular economy. Corporations and other large institutions are starting to put more and more emphasis on sustainability, ranging from introducing renewable energy sources, to lowering water consumption, to reducing once-off materials in manufacturing and to promoting environmental awareness amongst their workforces.