Meathwoman's Diary: Brewing up change in Bettystown

200,000 single use cups are disposed of in the Bettystown area alone each year. That's a remarkable figure. Far from soya milk lattes we were reared it seems we have turned into quite the coffee darlings almost overnight going by those stats. The local tidy towns group who know the issue around this only too well, they are literally left to pick up the pieces on a daily basis after all have created a super initiative where businesses in Bettystown have signed up to become completely free of single use coffee cups in a bid to make the town one of the first in Ireland to move to reusable coffee cups.

The coffee shops have also agreed to introduce a collective deposit system by partnering with 2GoCup. The partnership enables customers to purchase a reusable cup for a €2 deposit which is refundable when the cup is returned at any of the participating locations in Bettystown.

I won't hark back to a simpler time when we all drank from tin cups and travelled on horse and cart but the environment has had a lot to contend with in recent decades with pollution across the board as a result of increased vehicle use, microplastics and often overlooked but one of the biggest culprits the fashion industry which is the second largest polluter in the world - just after the oil industry.

Modern life sometimes seems like a paradox. Our ancestors would be astounded to witness Ireland in 2025. We can drive electric cars instead of riding horses. We live and work in multi storey homes and skyscrapers instead of log cabins. We communicate in real-time with others through our artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smartphones instead of sending handwritten letters via the Pony Express. Yet, for all our modern wonders, we can't seem to engineer a happy balance between innovation and nature.

Navan based artist Mary Clarke sums up this predicament in her latest exhibition ‘Melting, Moving, Mesmerising’

The showcase of art currently on display at Toradh Gallery 2, Kells Courthouse and Tourism Cultural Hub engages with the audience’s imagination, to stimulate conversation, and ultimately tackle widespread apathy towards change, in the hope of igniting positive action.

People Moving, Ice Melting, Layered Plastics, Soil Erosion, Fish Disappearing and Fires Harming are some the titles of the images in this exhibition.

“Beneath the ground and oceans, in the sky above and in the air that we breathe, there exists all the essentials we require to continue inhabiting our world," according to Mary.

She says the artworks are a reminder to the viewer that what we are doing to our environment "should be making us very uneasy" but if we take heed of nature's message we can contribute "to help nature fight back and allow us to continue our existence in harmony." Taking on climate change can seem like something way bigger than us but we all have a part to play so if our communities introduce initiatives to help the cause, as citizens of this world let's try to support them!