Going Peat Free ?
Just a thought on the peat free compost revolution.
Firstly it should be stated that the mining or removal of vast areas of peat from the ground for whatever purpose is obviously going to have an effect on the ecosystems reliant upon it and as an absorber of carbon dioxide, will inevitably have an effect on global temperatures and therefore is undeniably a contributor to climate change.
The good old British media (or parts of it) were very quick to jump on this issue and to blame the Garden Centre trade for the destruction of the planet, the RHS have declared (under pressure from said press) that they will be
peat free by 2025 and has called for the rest of us to follow suit.
But before you condemn us, consider this…
The vast majority of farmed peat is burned for heating and generating electricity, domestically and commercially, but we don’t do that.
Horticulture uses 0.0005% of world peat reserves (data from the International Peat Society). Now that figure on its own does not excuse us from an impact on climate change, let's be honest we're all contributing to climate change in some way. There is however, more to consider.
The peat we are responsible for is not burnt in to a cloud of planet killing vapour. We (and you) put our peat back in the ground from whence it came. Then we plant stuff in it. The stuff we plant in it grows in to little carbon sucking miracles called plants. If we nurture enough of these little plants, they turn in to bigger plants and every minute of every day they are absorbing more and more nasty carbon from the atmosphere. Pretty cool really, the very substance we are told not to use because we killing the planet is actually helping us to preserve it.
So please, if you're concerned and think that even the tiniest amount of peat used in a "regular" bag of compost is in some way contributing to irreversible climate change, buy peat free compost. But maybe the plants you grow in the old fashioned moisture retaining nutrient rich compost will outweigh the effect of farming the tiny bit of peat it contains.
Food for thought. And there's a thought; you can grow food in it too...