Another petition: Ban peat compost for garden use

wild edges

Official email from this morning.

"Because of the General Election, the closing date for the petitions you signed has changed. All petitions now have to close at 00:01am on 6 November. This is because Parliament will be dissolved, which means all parliamentary business – including petitions – will come to an end until after the election. This means the petitions site will be closed and people will not be able to start or sign petitions.

We’re sorry we weren’t able to give you more notice that this would happen.

The petitions will be available for people to read on the site even though it will be closed for signatures. These petitions won’t be reopened after the election."

Fire

Good stats here. Take the lead!

Fire

BBC article on ending demand for peat free composts.  'Woefully slow".

An invitation to take a personal lead and not waiting for other people to go first.

Brockman

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wild edges

Covid provided a useful demonstration of problems and solutions I think. In one way the demand for compost meant that companies could sell anything they wanted and customers didn't care what it was made of. You could have pulped rainforests and chucked it in a bag and people would have formed a socially distanced queue to buy it. Like many others though I found that I used every scrap of home made compost that I could find and wished that I had made more. The result was that I have to admit I've been buying and using more bagged compost than I need to and this year I now have a better supply of home-made ready to go. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

I also note that my council are burning all food and green waste now and biofuel. The council recycled compost I've used was pretty terrible for most purposes but that could have been improved fairly easily. The material to replace peat has to come from somewhere after all and it can't all viably be from virgin sources. 

Butterfly66

I haven’t used a peat based compost for decades. Sometimes I get a duff batch but no more often, IME, then friends who still buy peat based compost.
Maybe peat free does behave differently (re water rentention etc etc) but that’s just the same as different soils working and behaving differently.

My only contact with peat based compost s is when I buy plants as unfortunately most of the industry still uses peat-based composts.

Fire

The industry's line is (as stated in the article) that there is still 'high demand' for it. They would sell off grandmothers if there was a market. Consumers' line is "they still sell it". A Mexican stand off until one party cares enough to stop or govt legislates.

wild edges

This is where petitions will always fail without data to back them up. You'd need a small army of volunteers to stand outside supermarkets and garden centres to ask 3 questions when people buy compost:

Did you check if the compost you've bought contains peat?

Did you specifically want compost that did/didn't contain peat?

Are you aware of the environmental issues with peat use?

I'd be interested to know the results but I suspect the industry is less interested.

Fire

WE, I would say that looking at our own forum poll, that if gardeners who are well aware of the issue still mostly don't care one way or the other, the general public won't see it as an issue. It only seems to be gardening programmes that seem to be pushing it as a pressing issue.

JennyJ

The sad fact is, most of the general public (who don't watch gardening programmes, read gardening magazines or look at gardening forums) won't stop buying peat until it's either not available or significantly more expensive than peat-free alternatives.