Ambient sound levels have been rising for years, as they have been in many cities as they get more crowded, and council officials are looking for ways to slow the increase.
Nearly every candidate mentioned transportation and waste as the two most talked-about climate-action-related concerns when they’re out knocking on doors.
“Every time, we choose to switch on our car engines – to drop the kids to school, nip down to the shop or drive to work – we make this worse,” says TU Dublin lecturer Sarah Rock.
“When I moved to Dublin many years ago one of the first things that struck me was the frequent sight of urban foxes,” writes this month’s cover illustrator.
Last year, Dublin City Council issued four fines for dog fouling. “Of which only one was paid,” said Green Party Councillor Patrick Costello, at a recent meeting.
Buried underground are everything from aeronautical parts and food waste, to vials of blood and construction debris. Some worry that leaving it there could lead to wider environmental damage.
The Environmental Protection Agency rates the water quality at Sandymount Strand and Merrion Strand as “poor”. The council and others are looking more closely at what, or who, is to blame.
A collaboration between a Trinity College Dublin researcher and a cycle-tour company is strapping air-quality monitoring gear to cyclists helmets as they explore the city.
Dublin City Council is trying foam, flames, vinegar and old-fashioned weeding as it tries to roll back the use of herbicides in the city. But some are asking why weeds have to be weeded out, anyway.
As snakes of traffic through the east of the city lengthen, some residents in Ringsend want the Environmental Protection Agency to step up its pollution-monitoring.
