Alternative compost challenge

AG’s Steve Bradley explains the current situation and offers his thoughts on the benefits and challenges of finding an alternative that satisfies the needs of gardeners

- Steve Bradley

FROM the end of next year, gardeners in England will no longer be able to get any peatbased compost (it will still be in use in Europe). They are being banned due to peat extraction causing alleged damage to the environment, mainly through releasing long-stored CO₂.

One-sided debate 

The debate has been somewhat onesided, with strong lobbying from environmental and wildlife groups claiming that although British gardens cover over 4 million hectares of land, the impact of using peat is too high a price to pay. These groups usually speak as if all the peat for compost is being extracted from pristine peat bogs, rather than ones which have been drained and worked by humans over centuries for agriculture and habitation.

The alternative view might be that the lowest CO₂-emitting activity that could be carried out on such degraded lowland bogs is actually peat extraction — lower than forestry, agriculture, grazing, urban development or even leaving the land unused.

Research into alternatives 

Peat composts were many years in development, at research stations in the UK. These establishments have almost all been closed down, so compost manufacturing companies have to conduct research themselves. For many years, they have been testing various materials, with differing results.