Sustainable Kildare Winners Announced
Innovative business climate competition achieves high levels of employee engagement and large savings in CO2 emissions.
At a ceremony at Naas Racecourse on June 22nd, Mayor of Kildare, Naoise Ó Cearúil announced Zinon IT Solutions as the overall winner of an innovative, county-wide climate competition.
The competition was launched in October 2021, and hosted by County Kildare Chamber with support from Intel Ireland. Officiating at the launch last year were Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar with Martin Heydon, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture and Kildare South TD, County Kildare Chamber Chief Executive Allan Shine and Intel’s External Relations Manager Lisa Harlow.
The championship, which ran in three separate phases, brought together small and medium businesses in the county of Kildare to participate in an interactive environmental challenge. Each phase lasted three weeks and encouraged staff to save as much CO₂ as possible, by registering daily, eco-friendly activities and making small changes in their lifestyle. The final challenge concluded in June 2022.
A total of 65 different businesses participated in the championship with a participation rate of 86% from staff across the businesses. In total, 56,106 kgCO₂e was saved during the campaigns which was achieved through participants completing 41,716 activities.
If everyone in Ireland took on this challenge and achieved the same results, nearly 780,000 tonnes of CO2 would be saved.
Mayor of Kildare, Naoise Ó Cearúil announced the winners of the championship:
- Overall Winner – Zinon IT Solutions
- 2nd Place Overall – Barretstown
- Most Engaged Company – In Sync Youth Information Service
- Commendable Effort – Horse Racing Ireland
- Round 3 Winner – MGS
Speaking about the challenge, Intel External Relations Manager Lisa Harlow said; “Intel have been a proud and passionate supporter of the Sustainable Kildare initiative and are delighted to see how small and medium companies across the county have embraced the competition and seen such impactful results. Partnership and cooperation are at the heart of tackling climate challenges. We congratulate Kildare Chamber for bringing this initiative to their members who embraced it so successfully.”
Also speaking about the challenge CEO of Global Action Plan, Hans Zomer added; “At Global Action Plan we have been delighted to be able to provide the platform and content for the groundbreaking ‘Sustainable Kildare’ project. The climate challenge not only resulted in big savings in CO2 emissions, but also saw unprecedented levels of employee engagement with possible solutions to the climate crisis. County Kildare now has hundreds of new climate ambassadors, showing the power of individual action and collective behaviour change.”
For every company that participates in the challenge, there will be a number of trees planted in Barretstown, Co. Kildare to ensure that the initiative has a lasting impact in the county. Additionally, through the partnership between Intel Ireland and Global Action Plan, trees will be planted close to the equator in Tanzania, which will ensure a lasting carbon legacy from the project.