Cork ladies use glass bottles to reduce plastic waste

Why not bring back the glass milk bottle?

It was a question posed by an ICA member at Cork Federation’s winter meeting, hosted last month by Dunderrow Guild and held in the hall of the local national school. It was an apt question considering the guest speaker was Abigail Joffe of environmental charity Voice Ireland — she was there to talk about recycling and what items may or may not be put in the recycling bin.

“We have to wash out our plastic bottles before recycling them. Couldn’t we wash the glass bottle and bring it back to the shop? I seem to remember when plastic bottles came out first we got 1p when we brought them back to the shop,” says Cork Federation president Eleanor Calnan who believes that — with over 8,000 members countrywide — the ICA could campaign to bring back the glass milk bottle.

“Cork Federation intends to bring a motion with a view to presenting it to the national ICA board,” she confirmed.

It was Eleanor’s second federation meeting as Cork ICA president.

My aim as president is to promote inclusiveness and bring balance to people’s lives with a healthy mix of work and leisure activities.

She’s also strong on guilds supporting each other. “We had a great turnout at the West Cork table quiz recently. We had 10 teams in Aughadown and 70 attended altogether even though it was a terrible night with lashing rain. This is an example of guilds working together — not every guild had a team contesting, but they came to support.”

Eleanor demonstrated lace-making at the National Ploughing Championships this year and also at the Knitting & Stitching Show at the RDS. “We had loads of enquiries from women wanting to join ICA at the RDS, they were asking where was the guild closest to them.”

Eleanor’s own guild — Leap ICA — is expecting a couple of new members to join during January.

A big believer in continuing education and in broadening one’s interests, Eleanor says Cork Federation members have, in the last two years, received 15 ‘excellent’ awards for the handcraft disciplines they’ve studied.

Dunderrow Guild president Marie Buckley welcomed everybody to the federation meeting. Federation PRO Monica O’Shea reports that Dunderrow Guild, founded in 1966, still has four of its founding members — and three of them were actively involved in November’s meeting: Deirdre O’Regan, May Keohane and Eileen Walton, who won the Christmas card competition.