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10
Aug/Sept 2010 www.esb.ie/em 
ENERGY SOLUTIONS
ecars at the Olympics
In June, Special Olympics Ireland 2010, attended by over 1900 athletes, was hosted in the beautiful surroundings of the University of Limerick. The 2300 volunteers this year included many staff from ESB Customer Supply and ESB Networks. ESB Volunteers Kevin Ryan and Gary Murphy organised for ESB's electric vehicles to be there to help out. The Electric people carrier was driven by Gary Murphy to ferry VIP's from Hotels and for airport collections; the new Mitsubishi electric cars were used by sports officials to get themselves and athletes around the large campus. Special Olympics 2010 was a hugely successful and is becoming an increasingly sustainable events.
Energy eco-solutions for your garden
Embrace the Imperfections
Instead of weeding out your lawn to remove all the dandelions and buttercups, see if you can live with the imperfections for a while. You will be doing the local wildlife a favour.
Wheel your bin
Wheelie bins, rollout carts and recycling container aren't the prettiest sight, so give some thought to where you are going to place them on your property. One great thing to do is build a simple slatted screen or shelter out of reclaimed timber.
Pot your plants
Make your own pot plants by reusing large plastic yogurt and ice cream containers instead of throwing them away. Simply cut holes in them and hide them inside a larger ‘show’ pot.
Get a grass seat
The greenest garden seat of all is one made of grass! Create a turf table and chairs using chicken wire and rest assured you will have the greenest furniture in town.
Feed the birds
Apart from being an attractive addition to the garden, a bird table made of reclaimed wood will attract birds for you to watch and will promote a natural habitat.
Build your own barbie
The kindest way to barbecue at home is to make your own built-in barbecue with old bricks or a recycled tin drum. This way you are not buying new and you won't have to replace it for many years.
Perfect motion
To save on electricity, fit motion sensors to your outdoor lights so they only go on when they are needed.
Make a meadow
If you have the space, consider creating a wildflower meadow or wild area in your garden by planting wild flowers or seeds. Local wild flowers will attract butterflies, bees and other desire able insects.
Soak your soil
Don't soak plants with hose pipes – instead, use a porous soaker hose irrigation system that will leak water to your plants slowly, ensuring that they can make use of every last drop, you can get your hands on one of these systems in any good garden store.
Stop the spread
The minute you notice one of your plants is diseased, get rid of it to avoid it passing on the disease. Make sure you dispose of it away from the garden – adding it to the compost could encourage the disease to spread.
Get tooled up
Choose garden tools made from sustainable wood or recycled plastic and rubber, not PVC, especially for water containing items like rain buckets and hoses, as well as compost bins.
Source: 1001 little ways to save our planet.
Service forum launched
ESB CUSTOMER SUPPLY
ON JUNE 17th, ESB CS has further enhanced its customer service offering by launching a new online channel – a customer care forum on Boards.ie.
Boards.ie is an Irish online forum and is the fourth biggest Irish website with about 1.3 million visitors a month, over a million threads (individual conversations or topics) and over 15 million posts. A wide variety of topics are discussed, mostly from (but not limited to) an Irish perspective. The site is essentially a collection of over 1,000 discussion forums covering areas as diverse as Xbox, digital photography, creative writing, mortgages, weddings etc. From a customer viewpoint, Boards.ie provides an independent and neutral platform for Irish consumers to voice their opinions, ask questions and solicit opinions from their peers. In addition to general interest-area forums, Boards.ie also offer consumer facing organisations the opportunity to host their own customer care or ‘Talk To’ forum. Organisation currently offering a Talk To forum including Vodafone, Currys, Richer Sounds and Pix.ie.
The new ESB Customer Supply forum demonstrates our commitment to customer service and gives us the opportunity to listen and engage in customer conversations, to address customer complaints and feedback, as well as positively influence customers’ opinions.
ESB CS on Boards.ie is being run by a number of our NCCC agents including David Melinn and Chris McElligott and is now available to view at www.boards.ie/esb
For more information please contact Edel McCarthy at 26245 or Pat Philpott at 54238
Na Dubh Ghall & Dubs success
New forum for retired staff
Switched On Active – staying in touch
Since being ‘evicted’ some months ago, it has struck me how difficult it is to keep in touch with former ESB colleagues who have been visited by the same fate! So with a view to addressing that situation, a new web-based forum has been put together specifically for former ESB staff which, it is hoped, can help in improving contact and maintaining friendships established over the years. The site – Switched On Active – has been developed to provide a resource for retired ESB staff to enable them to keep in contact with former colleagues and to provide information on past, present and future activities of interest. In particular, the Members’ Forum will provide an opportunity to discuss items of mutual interest, raise queries about issues of concern or make contact with colleagues from the past. It will, it is hoped, prove a valuable source of information to enable enjoyment of those ‘retiring moments’!
So get clicking on – http://sites.google.com/site/switchedonactive/ – for a world wide web of opportunity or contact
Dominic Colbert (ex Telecoms, GIA and Corporate HR) at switchedonmessage@gmail.com for further information.
