Local family will find out what planet they are on!
A Mullingar family are among three who feature on a new RTÉ series, What Planet Are You On?, starting this week.
Over three nights, three families tackle the challenges in the areas of water, waste, energy and food, and their consumption and refuse are monitored 24/7 by four experts and presenter Maia Dunphy.
The Mullingar family are the McKevitts – Jason McKevitt lives in Mullingar with his wife Rachel and Jason’s daughter Áine Ní Dháibhéid. Jason works for the Longford Westmeath Education Training Board, with children from marginalised backgrounds. Rachel is a public health nurse with the HSE.
Jason sometimes has a fondness for using recyclable materials as kindling in the family fire, something Rachel strongly disagrees with along with family pet, Charlie the Terrier, who runs out of the sitting room whenever Jason strikes a match for the fire.
Áine, Jason’s teenage daughter, scolds him over his bad behaviour and is pushing for her father to become more environmentally aware.
See how they get on today, Tuesday November 12; Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th November, at 7pm on RTÉ One each evening.
What Planet Are You On? is a factual reality series funded by Science Foundation Ireland, being broadcast to coincide with Science Week.
The three households welcomed cameras into their homes: as well as the McKevitts, the Gannons in Tuam, County Galway, and the Cullens in Finglas, Dublin feature.
Each house was retro-fitted with water-flow meters to measure every drop used, smart plugs, and a new electricity monitoring device called a Smappee recorded every Watt consumed by the households – and their bins were taken away each week to be assessed. A team of data collectors monitored the three households, day and night. Each crumb of food was noted. Every calorie counted and the carbon footprint of each plate of food is revealed in each show.
Every kilometre travelled was recorded, by foot, bicycle, car, train or bus. These three households had nowhere to hide. Crunching the numbers, four Experts in their fields; Professor JJ Leahy for energy use, Professor Fiona Regan for water use, Dr Marco Springmann on diet and Dr Brian Kelleher on waste.
Each show features a week of household monitoring, followed by a meeting with the experts. This meeting was filmed on the Tipping Floor of the Dublin Waste To Energy Plant, which produces energy to power 100,000 homes. The Tipping Floor is set against a backdrop of black bin waste and the reality that if we make small changes and think beyond bin lids, we can reduce waste by up to 20%.