The European and Local Elections take place on Friday, May 24th and candidates will erect an estimated half a million posters on telephone poles and lamp posts across the country. Most of these posters will end up in landfill after the elections, with little regard given to the plastic epidemic gripping the world. To try to solve this problem a new website called candidates.ie has been launched by NoteCloud, a small technology company based in Tralee. The website aims to make it easier for voters to find out about the candidates contesting the elections.
Commenting on the launch, NoteCloud founder Brian Stephenson said “We are involved in a number of environment and community clean-up projects locally and the issue of election posters has been raised more than once. We decided to try to solve this by building a user-friendly online directory and inviting candidates to create profiles and give a little info about themselves and their ideas.”
Candidates.ie is described as a social business designed to promote, encourage and make positive social change. All revenues are reinvested into the business or used to start other social businesses.
“We run a number of other social businesses including www.learnfromleaders.ie and www.seeitsayit.ie and while we’ll never profit from these projects we get a lot back that can’t be measured in financial terms. We’re also building a great work culture and making lots of friends.” added Stephenson.
