GROWN FOREST
THE POWER OF ONE Dublin Fire Brigade firefighter/paramedic Neil McCabe talks to Adam Hyland about his latest venture into sustainability and a greener environment.
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n the last few years, Dublin Fire Brigade firefighter and paramedic Neil McCabe has done an incredible amount of work on environmental issues that started out with recycling projects at Kilbarrack Fire Station in north Dublin, and evolved into his innovative GreenPlan that has now become a global initiative that has seen his sustainability programme incorporated into all building planning within Dublin Fire Brigade, Dublin City Council and organisations across the world, culminating in his meeting then-President Barack Obama at the White House. Now, in the latest venture, Neil, serving with A Watch North Strand, has turned his attention to GROWN Forest, a project run as part of the GROWN ethical clothing business he runs with fellow DFB members Damian Bligh of D Watch Blanchardstown, and Stephen O’Reilly at D Watch, Dolphin’s Barn.
GROWN FOREST
Featured on RTÉ’s Eco Eye in August 2020, GROWN Forest represents the impact we can make together by preparing land and forests for future generations to enjoy, with a native tree planting project providing the chance for each individual to make a tangible difference to the environment and embrace ‘the power of one’. It has become an exciting branch of the GROWN ethical clothing business, which grew out of a mission to reduce the amount of plastics making their way into Ireland’s waterways.
FF/P, head of Grown Forest and GreenPlan creator Neil McCabe planting trees on Eco Eye
“We started off as a project to educate people on the amount of plastic waste that was in the ocean,” Neil explains. “Myself, Stephen and Damian swim a lot, and we found that every time we went for a swim we were coming out with a bag of plastic. We wanted to highlight this, because a lot of people don’t know that when you wash your clothes, microbeads are released because clothing has so much plastic and synthetic fibre in it. This makes its way to the ocean and has a terrible effect on marine life. “We developed an organic t-shirt range that eventually expanded to other garments, all with the purpose of saying to people that there are
other ways to buy clothing, to buy better clothing, that shouldn’t cost the earth, literally.” He explains how the idea for a tree planting project came about. “I got the idea of planting a tree for every item of clothing we produced, regardless of whether it sold,” he says. “It has always been a lifelong dream for me to develop forestry and to grow the idea that ordinary people can have a tree planted for them because they bought an item of clothing. “That idea took hold, and for the last two Black Fridays, we closed down the webpage and said to people that if you are online on Black Friday buying something with money you don’t have, for somebody who doesn’t really want
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