New environment officer

AS A QUALIFIED horticulturalist with years of experience in environmental education, it is no surprise that Dee Sewell has joined Carlow County Council as environmental awareness officer.

Those in the gardening community will be aware of Dee’s impressive CV, running her ‘Greenside Up’ business since 2009, promoting the ‘grow your own’ ethos. A voluntary founding member of the local Environmental Network, Dee is also a recycling ambassador, a Grow champion and a master composter.

“When you do the small things, they make you want to do more small things, which all add up to big things,” she told The Nationalist, adding that there is an appetite for climate action.

She hopes “to help people live in a way that’s more in harmony with the environment. We are part of nature and need to live more sustainably within it because everything we do effects it”.

Dee has gotten straight to work, preparing for the upcoming Sustainable Development Goals and Climate Action Weeks, continuing to work with the green schools’ initiative and the library LEAF projects. 

She is joining “a great team”, who are "passionate" and "also have policy and funding behind us to get things done”, she said.