Milborne Port Climate and Nature Action group
For peat’s sake!
There has been a long-running campaign against using peat. Why? Essentially, healthy wet peatland is not only an important wildlife habitat but also acts as an absolutely huge carbon store (area for area it holds three times as much as woodland), representing the partially decomposed remains of plants built up incredibly gradually over thousands of years since the last ice age – over 3,000 years to accumulate a depth the height of an average woman. Peatland also acts as a water store, holding up to fifty times its weight in water, helping mitigate drought, flooding and wild fires.
In Somerset, peatland stores a whopping 40 Mt of carbon dioxide as carbon in an area of 426 km2 : 40 Mt is the equivalent of ten years of all the greenhouse gas emissions of the whole county. Staggering.
If peat is dug up, burnt, drained or dries out, those benefits are lost and all that carbon is released back into the atmosphere with dire consequences. And that is happening at an alarming rate as peatland is drained and / or dug for compost. But as we have seen, it is vital that the store of carbon is kept locked away as healthy, wet peatland.
If we can rewet peatland it will help us adapt to climate change, and very gradually enable more carbon to be stored. So…
Here’s One New Thing To Do for our Future
Buy only 100% peat-free compost and ask to buy plants grown in peat-free alternatives.
Thursday 1st June 7.30pm Town Hall (upstairs) MP CAN meeting. All welcome.