Environmental Issues

Why Recycle?

Recycling is an excellent way of saving energy and conserving the environment. It is one of the best ways for you to have a positive impact on the world in which we live. Recycling is important to both the natural environment and us.

Environmental Importance

Recycling is very important as waste has a huge negative impact on the natural environment. Harmful chemicals and greenhouse gasses are released from rubbish in landfill sites. Recycling helps to reduce the pollution caused by waste.

Habitat destruction and global warming are some of the effects caused by deforestation. Recycling reduces the need for raw materials so that the rainforests can be preserved. Huge amounts of energy are used when making products from raw materials. Recycling requires much less energy and therefore helps to preserve natural resources.

What does Horticap Recycle?

Recycling is important to us at Horticap and we all like to take part and do our bit! At Horticap we have many different things that we recycle, among these are:

Compost

We have waste bins in the greenhouses that we fill with cuttings, cut grass, left over compost, and old dead plants. These all get emptied into our compost heaps, which eventually, over time get composted down. This can then be re used as a garden mulch/soil improver. We produce about 12 cubic metres each year. That’s two large full skips not going to landfill.

Water

On site we have four large water tanks. These collect rainwater. Between them they hold around 30,000 gallons, that’s over 112,000 litres. We recycle this water, using it for our watering systems in the greenhouses, and in our gardens to water plants. This water is also used to flush our toilets and to clean vehicles and equipment. This saves the use of well over 1,120,000 litres of treated drinking water each year. That’s the same as the annual water used by 5 average households, enough water for 5,600 baths or 22,400 showers.

Plant Pots

We always re-use any plant pots that we have used. The students carefully remove any labels, clean and sort all of these for us to use again.

Wood

Wood is recycled in many different ways at Horticap. Local tree surgeons and other trade gardeners bring us piles and piles of woodchip and logs, we use these to sell on to customers and around our site, we also use these when we go out on jobs in the community. We make bird tables and birdhouses from left over wood, we make other wooden craft items to sell in our shop. We also make our own charcoal from small logs; we sell this in the shop. In the future we would like to use wood to heat our large greenhouse.

Our Patron Alan Titchmarsh uses Melcourt Multi-purpose, we are local stockists of this product

PEAT FREE COMPOST

Due to the imminent ban on the retail sale of bagged horticultural peat in a move to protect England’s precious peatlands Horticap have taken the decision to stop selling compost containing peat with immediate effect.

Statement from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs

Peatlands are the UK’s largest carbon store but only approximately 13% of our peatlands are in a near-natural state. This degradation has occurred due to drainage for agricultural use, overgrazing and burning, as well as extraction for use in growing media.

Peat extraction also degrades the state of the wider peatland landscape, damaging habitats for some of our rarest wildlife such as the swallowtail butterfly, hen harriers and short-eared owls, and negatively impacting peat’s ability to prevent flooding and filter water. A significant proportion of the UK’s water supply lands or flows through peatlands.

Bagged retail growing media accounts for 70% of the peat sold in the UK and is frequently misused, for example being used as a soil improver rather than a medium in which to propagate plants. When this extraction takes place, the carbon stored inside the bog is released as carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change.

Working with local businesses

We work with local businesses, for example Bettys and Taylors and The Cone Exchange, recycling in the community and at Horticap.

Reduce

Alongside our re-use and recycling we constantly look to ways of reducing the energy we use on the site. We have achieved this in many ways:

Insulation of buildings
More efficient heating systems
Installing timers on heating systems
Thermal screens in the greenhouse
Self opening doors
Moving plants to one greenhouse over winter and turning off the heaters in the others
Turning down thermostats

These measures have reduced our combined consumption of oil, gas and electric by around 50% – 60% each year.