The first reported case of Covid-19 in the US was identified on 20 January 2020. It wasn’t until late March, however, that certain states began implementing restrictions – shutting down businesses and imposing stay-at-home orders.
Watch Niamh Alexander interview Ella McGettigan about the Covid-19 crisis a year on in the United States
“Trump just kept belittling the situation and he was saying ‘there is nothing to be worried about, it’s not going to affect us.’ When we got our first case, it was like it was no big deal,” says student Ella McGettigan, speaking to The City from her dorm room in Quinnipiac University, Connecticut.
A shot of Trump Tower. Photo by Priya Karkare on Pexels
“If you practised proper social distancing, you were just a diehard liberal and if you were anti-mask then you were just a diehard Trump fan”
Ella McGettigan
“If [he] had stated that the coronavirus was something that was dangerous and threatening us, then we would be in a completely different situation right now,” she says.
Trump’s attitude to the pandemic created a huge divide in the country, causing confusion among red and blue states when it came to the level of restrictions.
“If you believed in coronavirus, if you practised proper social distancing, you were just a diehard liberal and if you were anti-mask then you were just a diehard Trump fan,” says McGettigan.
The divide is also evident in the way colleges in the US have handled restrictions.
McGettigan mentions that some colleges are stricter than others, with students in some areas free to throw parties during the day without any consequences.
Pictured: Covid-19 vaccine vials by Simon Torsten on Pixabay
At Quinnipiac University, however, weekly testing is mandatory and gatherings of more than two people are strictly prohibited.
“It’s hard because I’m in the Greek [i.e. sorority/fraternity] community and we usually do a lot of philanthropic events and fundraisers and obviously we can’t do that, so everything has just been on Zoom,” says McGettigan.
“But down south, people are holding formals with no masks.”
Contrary to expectations, the US’s vaccine rollout has been a success so far – President Biden surpassed his goal of delivering 100 million vaccines by his 100th day as president on his 59th day in office.
With doses administered currently averaging at 2.5 million per day, the successful rollout will be a point of positivity for a country that had such a rocky initial response to the pandemic.
Irish Olympian Nicholas Quinn took time out of his hectic training schedule to sit down with The City. The 27-year-old athlete, who’s currently based in Scotland, hasn’t been home in over a year due to the intervallic travel restrictions.
Quinn’s first time competing at the Olympics was in the Rio Games in 2016, where he took part in the men’s 100m breaststroke as well as the 200m race. Despite the pandemic, Quinn has been able to keep up with his training as well as his postgraduate work and will be arriving soon to compete in a series of trials to earn his place in this year’s Olympics.
Believe it or not, there was a time when Quinn thought the 2016 Rio Games would be out of his reach. It’s hard to imagine that someone who has amassed such success so early in life could lacking certainty about their own talents, but it just goes to show that underneath it all, even renowned athletes have insecurities.
“I’ve tried to use the time since Black Lives Matter was trending last year to educate myself and learn more about systematic racism in our society”
Nicholas Quinn
A Photo of the five Olympic rings. Taken by Kyle Diaz from Unsplash
During our conversation, I asked Quinn about the Black Lives Matter card in his social media bio.
“I’ve tried to use the time since BLM was trending last year,” he says, “to educate myself and learn more about systematic racism in our society and what we can do to help end it.”
#Deletebanreport is a scheme by the Olympic Federation Ireland calling for a zero tolerance approach to online hate speech by pushing the public – as well as sporting stakeholders – to take action when they see online abuse and discrimination, by deleting comments, banning the offenders and reporting them to the approriate platform.
Japan will be expecting over 10,000 competing athletes to arrive and once they do, they’ll be confined to the Olympic village. As of this moment, Japan has over 508,350 cases of Covid-19 and over 775,000 citizens have received a dose of the Covid vaccine.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games will commence on Friday 23rd July 2021.
Podge Henry, the host of the Podgecast. Image courtesy of Podge Henry
Like many people bored in lockdown, I discovered Podge Henry through one of his many viral videos on TikTok. At the moment, Henry has over 1.7 million likes on his page which has allowed him to have a career on various media platforms, firmly securing his status as an Irish influencer.
Henry’s main project at the moment is The Podgecast, a podcast where he interviews a different guest every episode and has open and honest conversations with them.
“From doing the podcast, I’ve realised that I enjoy mediating conversation or hosting people and letting them be the centre of attention.
“I much prefer when I’m talking to someone else and interviewing them. I just find that so much more enjoyable and just having a conversation. As someone else described it, the podcast is an earwig into a conversation with me and someone else,” Henry reflects.
Starting a podcast has become a popular pandemic pastime – is oversaturation a worry for Henry?
“I don’t think it’s oversaturated because people are putting the work in and there’s so much variety.
“It’s great as well because I can ask people for a hand or for advice and there’s so many people in Ireland who are creating such great podcasts.
“Come back to me in a couple of months and I’ll be like ‘get them off’,” he jokingly adds.
“I always feel kind of guilty because the pandemic has benefited me in a few ways, because people are consuming more content but also for me, it’s what got me doing the podcast regularly. I said ‘listen, I have to start going weekly and get guests’, and that’s when I really noticed the podcast growing.”
“The podcast is an earwig into a conversation with me and someone else”
Podge Henry
However, he also acknowledges the hardships that the last year has brought him too.
“You know, like everyone, there’s moments during the last couple of months where I have had times where I didn’t feel up for it or maybe wasn’t feeling myself, as everyone has, by trying to adapt and it’s been very tough.
“I know for myself that I often find it kind of hard to maybe open up or if I’m down, it’s sort of that Irish ‘oh I’m fine’ way of thinking,” Henry continues. “I think it’s about surrounding yourself with people who are able to talk. That’s one of the things that I’m lucky, very lucky to have, is people around me who understand me enough to know when I’m down. It’s definitely something that I don’t take for granted.”
The podcaster also shares his goals to promote topics related to mental health more on his show.
“It’s something that I’d like to do more on,” he says, “like more specific episodes with that focus. I had Rosanna Purcell on the podcast and we talked about body confidence and I definitely try to link it in the episodes and I try to do it as naturally as possible.
“I’d love to do live events where I can donate the money to a charity of some sort. Something that I’d love to be more able to do when the lockdown lifts is to give back a bit more,” he says.
Podge Henry cradling his Podgecast merch. Photo courtesy of Podge Henry
Henry has also been involved in a number of different sponsorships and campaigns. More notably, he participated in the AntiViral campaign at the end of 2020.
“I enjoyed getting behind it because they promoted the good of the people between the age bracket of 18 and 24, where people were following the guidelines,” he tells me.
“At the time, the media were giving a lot of bad press to the young people of Ireland and this is to promote the good that they were doing. It was also an incredible experience to interview Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn.”
Additionally, the internet personality also discusses his opinion on internet culture in 2021.
“Cancel culture is a funny one because it’s so broad,” he states. “I don’t really think it’s a blanket term. I think that you see it more now that it’s happening every day.
“In terms of being redeemed, it’s really down to the individual and is a case by case basis. It shouldn’t be focused on ending someone’s career, it should be focused on educating that person and other people as well.”
“Cancel culture shouldn’t be focused on ending someone’s career, it should be focused on educating that person and other people as well”
Podge Henry
Podge and I finish up our conversation by discussing the successes that the internet has brought him, such as “the podcast reaching 12,000 downloads in November, which of course in comparison to other people’s podcasts might not be that much at all. But for me, when I compared it to the year before, I had just over 1,000 so that was cool. It’s just those little goals where you kind of realise what you’ve achieved afterwards that I enjoy.”
Henry optimistically looks to the future. “A lot of opportunities that I got last year weren’t really ones that I saw happening, but I’m so happy that they did. So, I hope to keep the podcast up and hopefully more opportunities will present themselves.”
Smoking up the atmosphere: just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of the world’s emissions. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
As a child during the late 1990s, I was surrounded by reminders of my personal duty of care to our planet.
My boyhood hero Barney the Dinosaur relentlessly implored me to never let the water run, just as Captain Planet had for my older brother.
Although I was somewhat unsure of what a compost bin was, I made sure to lecture my parents as to the virtues it would bring to our household.
Despite constant assurance that my lifestyle habits could change the world, I always felt that underlying sense of futility common amongst those born around Fukuyama’s end of history.
This ambient dread was perhaps exacerbated by a sense of contradiction – the Celtic Tiger culture of my formative years celebrated reckless excess and unfettered corporate growth while we were personally made hyper-aware of our individual responsibilities to the earth.
While it is undeniably important to remember that our individual actions can make a change, I was immediately struck by the dissonance of how little attention had been given to the perspective that climate change is primarily driven by corporations.
“On an international level, fossil fuel companies seem to be particularly assiduous greenwashers”
Caroline Whyte
This perspective had been kept out of my consciousness, in part, through the corporate strategy of greenwashing – the marketing ploy through which the companies who are disproportionately responsible for burning up our planet attempt to present themselves as saviors of mother nature.
“I’d say there are two kinds of corporate greenwashers, intentional and unintentional,” says Caroline Whyte of the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, or Feasta.
“Intentional greenwashers aim to make money off naive consumers who are concerned about the environment and are befuddled by clever marketing. These greenwashers seem not to believe that there’s an environmental crisis at all – or if there is, that it somehow won’t affect them and so they can just make a few superficial gestures to placate the public and then continue on as before,” says Whyte.
“The unintentional greenwashers are different because they genuinely wish to improve their businesses’ environmental impact. The problem is that they believe that ‘green’ GDP growth is possible in the aggregate, so they don’t see any need for systemic change, either within their own organisations or in the wider economy,” she continues.
Whyte believes that the motivation for companies to greenwash stems from a mandate to maximise profits for shareholders, as well as financial constraints which make it impossible for corporations to truly put the environment first.
“Corporations have more of an impact than individuals for sure, because of their formidable political lobbying power, their ownership of the mainstream media and their ability to hire expensive lawyers to fight legal challenges to the damage they do,” Whyte says.
Here in Ireland, many of us were made aware of greenwashing after Ryanair declared themselves “Europe’s lowest fares, lowest carbon emissions airline” just five months after their inclusion on the EU top 10 carbon emitters list – and they are far from the only Irish company to employ misleading marketing campaigns.
Ryanair is just one of many companies using Greenwashing tactics. Photo from Ryanair’s Media Centre
“The Origin Green programme in Ireland is a clear example. It’s run by Bord Bia, but many Irish agricultural companies are participants,” says Whyte.
“Bord Bia has a conflict of interest because it’s simultaneously generating metrics to try and show how sustainable Irish agriculture is, and also acting as a marketer for Irish products abroad.
“Bord Bia publishes figures showing that the amount of emissions generated per litre of milk produced in Ireland has gone down – while failing to mention that overall production of milk has increased dramatically over the past decade, so that aggregate emissions are growing relentlessly.
Bord Bia has been contacted for comment on this but The City is yet to receive a response.
“On an international level, fossil fuel companies seem to be particularly assiduous greenwashers,” says Whyte.
“Intentional greenwashers aim to make money off naive consumers who are concerned about the environment and are befuddled by clever marketing”
Whyte
In Whyte’s view, the corporate orientation towards shareholder profit as well as the greenwashing campaigns which justify these environmentally harmful business models need to be ended if we are to move towards a sustainable future.
“To end greenwashing there needs to be a reorientation of international trade law and corporate law in favour of stability and resilience rather than aggregate productivity growth, along with a massive recalibration of debts, the setting of hard limits on the supply of raw materials whose use breaches planetary boundaries, such as fossil fuels, and a shift in the overall focus of the economy away from increasing consumption and towards well-being.
“Companies can of course also set internal targets for becoming more sustainable in. But that doesn’t have as much effect on broader economic dynamics or on their own general orientation, and so it’s the weakest action of the three – although it gets the most attention right now.”
The European Parliament have taken steps to address greenwashing through the introduction of the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities in order to define and categorise which economic activities can genuinely be categorised as sustainable.
The full list of sustainable activities is set to be completed in December of this year.
Zero-waste shop, The Good Neighbour, in Dundrum . Image courtesy of The Good Neighbour
Waste probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your local grocery store.
As you coast through its aisles, fixated on convenience and choice, the harsh reality is easy to forget – our weekly shopping runs are wasteful endeavours.
The plastic packaging our food comes in is a nasty ecological sore. Thankfully, the solution is easy: come prepared with alternative/reusable packaging options.
The Good Neighbour in Dundrum is one example of a business that is following the increasingly popular zero-waste model, designed to focus purely on reducing the amount of plastic waste.
“The concept is simple – bring your own container, and we weigh it in-store and deduct the weight of your container, so you are only charged on whatever food you take home,” says Jess Dollinger, the owner of The Good Neighbour.
The zero-waste shop initially opened its doors to the public in December 2019, which happened to be just four months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
The interior of The Good Neighbour, with containers of rice and grains on display. Image courtesy of The Good Neighbour
According to Dollinger, The Good Neighbour was forced to “pivot” in order to deal with the impact of the pandemic.
“We didn’t originally offer the option for customers to place orders, but we now offer orders for delivery and collection. Offering that service has really helped the business due to the high volumes of people quarantining,” Dollinger said.
“We’ve also got a great community of customers who want to make sure the shop thrives, so we’ve been very lucky throughout the pandemic,” she continued.
The shop offers over 300 bulk goods including grains, fruit and veg, spices, and several cleaning products – all package free.
“Our mission is to be as organic and plastic-free as possible. At this point, around 60% of our products are organic, and we’re constantly working on increasing our organic offering to customers,” Dollinger stated.
It’s “crucial for the industry”, says Dollinger, that her shop sells affordable products, as there’s a perception that choosing to live a zero-waste lifestyle is exorbitant for the everyday consumer.
“I think that we’ll eventually see a zero-waste shop in every area of Dublin”
Jess Dollinger
The Good Neighbour works alongside multiple local growers and producers to stock as much Irish produce as possible.
“Wherever possible we source locally. Unfortunately, a lot of things simply can’t be grown here, but where we can we purchase from local growers and suppliers.
“We’ll continue to support local farmers and produce, particularly throughout the pandemic,” Dollinger says. In recent years, climate change awareness has increased, and consumer habits have shifted to reflect that.
In Ireland, some companies are responding to that change with supermarkets taking action to reduce packaging and waste. Vegan and vegetarian sections have increased in size, and a lot of single-use coffee cups are now compostable.
Now, more and more people are choosing to live a zero-waste lifestyle.
Currently, there are eight zero-waste shops open for business in Dublin alone. The majority of these shops opened within the last two years.
“I stumbled across my first zero-waste [shop] when I was living in the UK. When I returned to Dublin, I noticed that several [zero-waste] shops began popping up across the city,” says Orla Browne, an environmental activist and frequent zero-waste customer.
“Living a zero-waste lifestyle is becoming more fashionable than ever before”
Orla Browne
Although the attitudes towards an eco-friendly lifestyle for many has changed, Ireland still currently produces the highest volume of plastic waste per person in the EU at 57 kilos per capita, which is considerably more than the EU average of 33 kilos per capita.
“Since returning home, I have noticed a change in attitude towards these issues, but you only must observe the stats to see how far behind we are in comparison to the rest of Europe.
“To contribute to the greater good, embarking on a zero-waste lifestyle by reducing small amounts of plastic in your household is a start,” Browne added.
However, Browne feels like we are still far off when it comes to acting on reducing plastic waste.
“The stats show that Ireland is well behind when it comes to dealing with environmental issues. This is something we as a nation should be wary of.
“I think people hesitate to go zero-waste because they are afraid that other [zero-waste] advocates will judge them if they don’t fully commit at all times.
“However, it’s not true. I found encouragement and the will to try harder by surrounding myself with like-minded people,” says Browne.
The zero-waste movement has arrived and the greater availability of this retail option to all Irish shoppers will allow it to become the norm.
As the population of the world move towards living a greener and more eco-friendly lifestyle, many of the traditions and habits we posses have had to adapt or change in some capacity in order to help us achieve this greener approach to life.
One such change we can undertake, even after we have left this earth, is to change our attitudes about burial rituals. Eco-burials are a growing phenomenon amongst the population as a cheaper and eco-conscious alternative to traditional methods.
Eco-burials follow the ethos of sustainability and the use of biodegradable materials, such as willow instead of the traditional varnished wood. Everything takes the environment into account, from the type of casket to the location of the burial.
Eco-burials are a growing industry in Ireland as people search for a safer, cheaper, and more viable means of burial going into the future. There are currently two companies operating natural burial sites in Ireland – Woodbrook Natural Burial Grounds in Ballinlug East, Co Wexford and Knockma Woodland Burials in Tuam, Co Galway. These burial grounds differ from the traditional graveyard as they are set in living woodlands, with stones used as grave markings instead of imposing headstones.
“They’re not as scary as the hard-based traditional coffin. They remind people of cradles or Moses baskets”
Colm McAteer
Colm McAteer, who owns Green Coffins in Donegal, shared his views on the benefits of eco-friendly funerals, the current trends and how he sees the future of this growing industry.
“The materials we use are biodegradable, they’re completely natural. Willow grows freely… It’s mainly softwood versus hardwood. It’s using a sustainable resource that’s readily available.”
He notes that it isn’t a new thing, as materials such as willow were originally used before the introduction of “cheaper materials like chipboard” and veneer, which are now traditionally used in the mass production of coffins but not really sustainable in the long-term.
A Willow casket pictured above. Photo provided by Colm McAteer
“A lot of the time people just like the look of them,” he says, “they’re not as scary as the hard-based traditional coffin, there’s more warmth in the material and there’s more warmth in the skill in making them. They often remind people of cradles or Moses baskets.”
McAteer fully expects the popularity of the eco-friendly coffin to keep growing.
“We think it will become the replacement, the norm or the new norm, and every year we get busier. What you do find is if one member of the family chooses that, in general other members do too.”
Green Coffins produce a number of different styles of coffins using various other materials aside from willow, including water hyacinth, banana leaf, pandanus, golden wicker and corrugated cardboard. Each coffin is made by hand to fit and takes from “three to three and a half days” to produce, according to McAteer.
He further adds “there’s a complete and utter craft in weaving the casket, to keep the size, to keep the walls straight as they go up, and it’s not something you learn overnight. It’s an old skill that was almost dead here in Ireland.”
McAteer also opened Ireland’s first natural burial site in 2010, WoodbrookNatural Burial Grounds in Co Wexford.
Woodbrook Burial Ground. Photo by Colm McAteer
“We want to look after our environment and it’s a simple natural burial,” he says. “They’re using you or your place of burial as a conservation tool.”
“Done right, they also create pockets of biodiversity close to major cities, and they are becoming places for people to reconnect with nature. People do come and spend time there and sit on the benches, they do enjoy the fact that they can be re-immersed in nature,” he tells me.
The burial ground itself is non-denominational with people of all faiths and walks of life buried here. McAteer also believes that as time goes on, there will be more of these natural burial sites cropping up around the country as an alternative to the traditional graveyard.
The natural burial grounds in Woodbrook offer a cheaper alternative to a traditional grave plot — the charge is €950 per plot, as opposed to €2,000 to €5,000 for an average plot.
Another natural burial site is Knockma Woodland Burials in Tuam, run by Donagh Hawtin. According to Hawtin, the benefits of a natural burial ground are that they are “more ecological, they leave less of a carbon footprint, they help with conservation.”
Knockma Burial Ground. Photo by Donagh Hawtin
“Unlike a traditional burial ground which is regimented with concrete, headstones and whatever else, this is still a living, breathing and growing environment,” she explains.
She says there is a trend away from traditional burial sites: “It is an alternative, which is something that surprised us. People are going away from the church; they are going away from tradition. Graveyards are getting full and there is no alternative.”
“People are going away from the church; they are going away from tradition… Graveyards are getting full and there is no alternative”
Donagh Hawtin
“It’s a growing market,” she continues. “We have had a lot of presales. People can buy it straight or they can come and find their plot, there’s no time limit.
“People like that we are already an established woodland, we haven’t been built up to be a woodland, we’re not regimented.
“The burial ground is changing, and it is our generation changing tradition and looking at alternatives. I believe that this is the future, and we are doing our bit for the new way of living and saving our planet.”
Further afield, Canadian company Bio Urns was established in 1997 by Gerard Moline.
According to their website, Bio Urns are the “world’s first biodegradable urn designed to turn you into a tree in the after-life. Specially made with two separate capsules, the urn is designed to contain the seed or seedling of your choice which will grow into a tree as a way for a person to be remembered by.”
The company also opened a natural burial ground in Quebec where people go to plant their bio urns.
It offers worldwide shipping and the urn costs €180.
So, whether you choose to be laid to rest in a in a bio-degradable casket, buried in a natural burial ground or become a tree in your afterlife there are plenty of options for those who want to continue their eco-friendly lifestyle and help improve their carbon footprint even after their gone.
Ceara Carney protesting at the Department of Agriculture with Animal Rebellion – a subgroup of Extinction Rebellion. Photo courtesy of Animal Rebellion Ireland
Prior to the pandemic, Extinction Rebellion were one of the biggest groups at the forefront of climate activism, making headlines worldwide. But ongoing lockdowns saw them forced to take a step back and rethink their plans.
“We are very much on the way back with some new tactics and we can’t wait to get back to the streets in huge numbers again”
Ceara Carney
Actress, podcast host, and activist Ceara Carney wants to make it clear that the group hasn’t gone anywhere.
“Our main tactic of mass mobilisation was taken away from us,” she explains. “But we’ve had some activists and rebels throughout the pandemic and lockdowns constantly meet to figure out our strategy going forward.
“We had our People’s Assembly meeting a few weeks ago where there were 116 people on a Zoom call and we came out with some visions of where to go next. We are very much on the way back with some new tactics and we can’t wait to get back to the streets in huge numbers again.”
Carney attending a protest with Extinction Rebellion and Irish Wildlife Trust to highlight overfishing in Irish waters. Photo courtesy of Ceara Carney
For the past year, activism hasn’t quite looked like it used to – large scale protests have been replaced with smaller actions and social media posts.
After dousing the building with red paint, the two spray painted phrases such as “no more empty promises” along the exterior.
The activists explained that the purpose was to highlight the lack of action from the government in response to the global climate crisis.
Carney portrays a sea goddess at Killiney Bay as part of a campaign to raise awareness for rising sea levels. Photo courtesy of Ceara Carney.
Following the live stream, many people took to social media to express their disgust at the act of vandalism.
“People were just really upset that this historical building had been destroyed, and the irony of that just gets to me,” Carney says.
“If we don’t change, and the government doesn’t change, that building could be subject to water damage from rising sea levels because Dublin is a coastal city. So if people really cared about that building they would be putting pressure on their government too to act now and fight the climate crisis. Nothing like that will matter if we keep going the way we are going.”
If you are interested in getting involved with Extinction Rebellion, email welcomexri@protonmail.com
Futurelettuce creates delicious vegan recipes from chicken wings to washed pastrami. Photo provided by Futurelettuce
It’s difficult to predict what TikTok trend will be next to go viral – and for an Irish college student who prefers to go by the pseudonym Futurelettuce, it was a surprise when one of his vegan cooking videos joined sea shanties and maid costumes as one of the app’s unexpected crazes.
“I first became vegan after writing a paper on veganism for a college philosophy class,” Futurelettuce tells me, “I couldn’t argue against it and that stuck with me after the assignment was done.”
While it was initially a struggle to adjust to a plant-based diet, Futurelettuce began to enjoy researching nutrition and experimenting with vegan dishes – a particular favourite was the “two-ingredient vegan chicken” that he decided to share to TikTok on 20 February.
“I think it got popular because people like to be shocked and the unexpected outcome of what began as flour looking like chicken got people to share it around.”
Futurelettuce
The video features a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a meat substitute based on the Chinese dish seitan, and became an instant hit on the app – it has since been viewed over 10 million times and gained the Futurelettuce account nearly 70,000 new followers over the course of three weeks.
“I first saw it done in a Facebook group and thought I’d give it a try,” Futurelettuce says about the process of his seitan recipe.
“You make a ball of flour and water, keep kneading it and rest it for a few hours ideally. Then you wash it underwater, and you’ll be left with a lot of starch water. Finally, you can add your seasoning, cook it up and it will resemble something like meat.
“I think it got popular because people like to be shocked and the unexpected outcome of what began as flour looking like chicken got people to share it around.
“It was very strange when it began to get popular, especially watching people make reaction videos to it. Watching people watch me is the weirdest feeling for sure,” he continues.
The success of the video has since extended its reach beyond the confines of TikTok – Google Trends shows a notable uptick in searches related to seitan starting from the video’s February release.
Off the back of his newfound virality, Futurelettuce was asked to make a video on Buzzfeed’s massively popular Tasty Facebook page – where he made sure to acknowledge the East Asian cultural origins of seitan.
“When there’s a TikTok trend going around people aren’t going to want to explore the history of the trend, so I felt a bit uncomfortable that I didn’t mention its origins in the original video,” Futurelettuce states.
“I do think there is a problem with people taking these ideas and not crediting them, so I felt it was necessary,” he adds.
“I didn’t want to use the usual talking points, I wanted to let it be known that veganism shouldn’t be restricted to just saving animals”
Futurelettuce
“I’ve seen a lot of comments saying I was virtue signaling, but anything right-wingers disagree with they’re going to be outraged, they’re just an attempt to distract from the conversation.”
An avowed leftist and union organiser when not in the kitchen, Futurelettuce is committed to the idea that veganism must go hand and hand with a wider commitment to social justice and the human rights of marginalised groups.
“I didn’t want to use the usual talking points, I wanted to let it be known that veganism shouldn’t be restricted to just saving animals,” he says.
“It’s hypocritical if you’re a vegan and you’re also racist. Intersectional veganism is the way forward.”
“Both veganism and socialism are grounded in the idea of liberation. One is for the working class, one is for animals. It’s about decommodifying animals and treating them as living things,” he says.
With EU Green Week just around the corner, our conversation then turns to the environmentalist element of veganism.
“There was a UN report a couple of years ago that said eating a plant-based diet is the most effective thing an individual can do to prevent climate change and one of the biggest contributors to Irish CO2 emissions is animal agriculture,” he tells me.
So, if you’re looking for a greener meal this week, head over to TikTok and take inspiration from one of Futurelettuce’s creations.
Double cycle lane along the Grand Canal, photo by Mario Bowden
Dublin city centre sits still and quiet these days. Traffic is noticeably tamer, with less gridlock traffic at rush-hour. For cyclists, this means less jostling and narrow manoeuvring through buses and cars. A bit of breathing space.
Certainly there are fewer people cycling in to work too – as people shift to working from home. But the bike is still in-motion. For some it’s a mode of work – takeaway drivers and couriers are still zipping around. For others it’s a form of escapism: people getting out and about in the sunshine, others doing ‘wheelies’.
Some are opting for the bike in order to avoid public transport too. Indeed, this trend is not unique to the current health crisis – people were encouraged during the 1918 Spanish Flu to get peddling.
With the lack of footfall in the city centre since the first lockdown, space became time. There was time for Dublin City Council (DCC) to implement various new and distinctly designated cycle routes across the city.
“I don’t think anyone would say cycling has been well provided for on Dublin city streets”
Ali Grehan
Some of the new cycle lanes across the city include the implementation of the the Liffey Cycle Route along the North Quays, contraflow lanes on Nassau Street, and the more recent route up O’Connell Street Upper and North Frederick Street. All of these are provided with bollards and black and white ‘orcas’ to segregate cyclist traffic from cars, buses and trams.
“The new cycling lanes are still a work in progress,” says Ali Grehan, Dublin City Architect at DCC.
Grehan continues: “They are much needed. I don’t think anyone would say cycling has been well provided for on Dublin city streets, particularly heavily trafficked ones – so in that sense they are successful in that they’re making necessary improvements.”
While the quick thinking of DCC has been a positive for the city, it is not without its pitfalls. For instance, the Nassau Street contraflow lane suddenly stops at Dawson Street, forcing cyclists to merge with traffic suddenly – not to mention Luas tracks – at one’s peril, with any false move.
The implementation of cycle lanes is not exclusive to the city centre either. Griffith Avenue on Dublin’s Northside has seen a fully segregated lane being rolled out across parts of its 4km stretch from Glasnevin to Marino. In May 2020 the Phoenix Park closed off sections of its roads to cars for the summer months – creating more space for people to mill about on their bikes.
On the Continent
European cities have always been miles ahead of Dublin when it comes to cycling infrastructure. But, we are not alone in terms of cities that took the current opportunity to shift the emphasis to cycling – Paris being the most prominent.
“The problem is, while you can look at Copenhagen or Amsterdam – [which have] great cycling infrastructure – it’s difficult to transpose one city’s approach to another,” Grehan says.
“Dublin has its own particular physical and cultural context and any initiative has to understand and respect this. It’s a complex issue. An example is Dublinbikes. There was a general expectation among commentators that the system would be vandalised. People were surprised when there was virtually no vandalism and Dublinbikes became very successful, very quickly.”
The full extent of the success of Dublin’s cycle lanes remains inconclusive as the city remains less active than in normal times, Grehan concedes. But with smarter innovation and progressive steps made by campaign teams and authorities, a change to Dublin’s road culture is being paved.
The ever-looming climate crisis means something’s gotta give – Ireland’s construction industry has to change, and it has to make that change affordable to the average person.
According to Francis Duffy, Green Party TD and spokesperson for housing, most of the homes now built in Ireland are highly-insulated and airtight ‘passive houses’, designed to use external elements like sunshine and shade to maintain a cosy climate and smaller carbon footprint.
Unfortunately, there is more to truly green construction – the materials used have carbon footprints all of their own, and that’s where our attention needs to be.
“The big elephant in the room now is embodied carbon,” says Duffy.
“When you dig a hole in the ground and take material out of it, whether that’s steel, iron, or cement, it gets transported, processed, manufactured, and transported again to site.
“Then it lives a life on a site or in a building. It may be replaced or maintained, but at the end of its life, it’s transported again, disposed of, recycled, or upcycled.
“There’s energy and carbon involved in all of that, which means that a bit of material gains embodied carbon,” Duffy explains.
“We’re hitting around 900 kilograms per square meter of embodied carbon in our buildings, and an A-rated building is 300 kilograms per square meter,” he tells me.
As an architect, Duffy is working on a private project in Dublin with the Irish Green Building Council. The aim is to use materials with low levels of embodied carbon.
“The big elephant in the room now is embodied carbon”
Francis Duffy
The frame of the building will be made from timber which “absorbs CO2 as opposed to spewing it out, which makes it CO2 negative”, says Duffy, who has extensively studied the use of timber as a sustainable material in construction.
“We’re using recycled bricks and lime mortar to hold them together. That makes the bricks easy to separate at the end of the building’s life, which means they can be used again,” he explains.
Duffy believes this is the future of building.
“You’re looking at 80% of a building being designed and constructed with the idea that at the end of its lifespan you can take it apart and re-use a lot of it in another project,” he explains.
Globally, efforts are being made to reduce the waste produced by building.
Cobod (construction of buildings on demand) are a construction technology company in Copenhagen, Denmark, who are pioneering 3D printed housing in Europe.
“We generate less waste [by 3D printing], because we have more precise numbers on how much material is needed for the building in advance,” says Vytautas Naslenas, a sales and marketing coordinator for Cobod.
However, Cobod print with concrete which Naslenas admits is not particularly sustainable.
“There are new solutions and companies are investigating how to make a mixture with a smaller CO2 footprint, but of course that is yet to come,” he says.
Affordability, speed, and how little waste is produced are the major draws to this method – by automating the process you make it quicker and reduce labour costs.
“I believe that in 15 years this will be the norm. Looking at how quickly things are moving from our side, it could be even sooner,” says Naslenas.
The cost of sustainable building is a huge issue – if construction emissions are so significant, as many people as possible need to be able to embrace sustainable construction methods.
“The housing regulations have improved significantly over the last number of years but they have made building really expensive,” says Michael Canney, chair of the board of Sustainable Projects Ireland.
“There’s a need to facilitate a more low-cost build without compromising on quality and energy efficiency,” Canney says.
Canney lives in the Cloughjordan Ecovillage, and Sustainable Projects Ireland work closely with the ecovillage.
An eco paradise: an aerial view of Cloughjordan Ecovillage. Photograph courtesy of Eoin Campbell JustMultimedia.com
The ecovillage is 67 acres in total and divided into three parts: high-performance green homes, a community farm, and biodiverse woodlands.
The houses in the ecovillage are built “using local labour, local materials, recyclable and reclaimed materials” as much as possible, says Canney.
Cloughjordan is working hard to attract young people who are potentially earning less to their community.
“We’re in negotiations with a couple of housing associations to take a number of sites and develop them using an affordability model,” Canney explains. “And we’d be offering those at rates that acknowledge the need for affordable housing rather than the maximum yield we could get for them.”
“We are also looking at co-housing models where a number of people can come together and build a house cooperatively,” he says, explaining that people would choose DIY construction methods that allowed them to build themselves without the cost of employing skilled labour.
“There’s a need to facilitate a more low-cost build without compromising on quality and energy efficiency”
Michael Canney
Canney feels there’s a bigger issue lurking in the shadows here.
“So many people are really confused about these ideas of embodied carbon, recyclability, and what’s recyclable in real terms,” says Canney.
“I think people could do with some really clear guidance on this, because we are bombarded with greenwashing from manufacturers.
“There’s a real obligation on state and semi-state bodies to really inform the public in a very non-biased way about this, so people can really make informed decisions.”
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