Public Service Excellence Award recognises FREE Trade website success.

On the 18th April the former Taoiseach Mr. Bertie Ahern T.D presented Dublin City Council with a Taoiseach’s Public Service Excellence Award for the FREE Trade service. The award was presented at a ceremony in Dublin Castle and is the highest accolade afforded to public sector projects in Ireland. The project received a further boost when it was selected to represent Ireland at a European Showcase in October.

The innovative service promotes the reuse of items in Dublin and allows users to extend the lifespan of items by advertising and passing them on through the service. Since its launch in August 2006 FREE Trade has been hugely successful with over 10,000 items having been reused through the service to date. In its short existence the service has contributed significantly to improving the management of resources and to the development of a full range of public waste services in Dublin.

FREE Trade service was developed by RPS in partnership with the Dublin Local Authorities as part of their on-going management of the DublinWaste.ie. The service was conceived by Mr. Warren Phelan, Associate with the Waste and Energy Department in the RPS West Pier offices, who has acted as project manager of the site since May 2004.

RPS plan to continue to evolve the service with additional innovative features planned including a new text alert system for users.

DublinWaste.ie was previously awarded a Golden Spider Award for Best Public Sector Website in 2007 and this recent honour cements its place as the most popular waste management website on the island of Ireland.

For more information contact: