Do you use peat in your garden - I wish you wouldn't! About 70% of UK peat use is through retail sales to you and me (except not me - so it must be you).
Peat doesn't come from bags - it comes from peatlands and its mining destroys peat habitats and its use leads to totally unnecessary increased carbon emissions. Annual carbon dioxide emissions from horticultural peat use are 630,000 tonnes. That's a lot of carbon.
We have been banging on about alternatives to peat for garden use for ages now and I know that many RSPB members have reduced or eliminated their peat use. I'm no gardener - I'm really not - but I am told by those who are that good alternatives to peat are available.
And governments always prefer asking people, rather quietly, to use less peat. It's that voluntary Big Society thing - although that's also the approach that the previous Labour government relied on too. And we know it doesn't work very well.
Back in the 1990s - remember them? - a target was set for 90% of materials used in growing media and soil improvers to be non-peat alternatives by 2010. The target was missed by 32%. And things aren't getting better very quickly - between 2007 and 2009 total UK peat use fell by a very small 1.63%. That's not a great success for the voluntary approach.
Since the Government is looking for green taxes - I can't help but think a tax on peat use might be a good one.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Sooty, yes it really is about the magnitude of the carbon stored in peat and the level of emissions. We should be very very careful about anything that affects peatlands. It is a fact that damaged peatlands are a source of carbon emissions whereas intact properly functioning peatlands are a sink, they absorb CO2 and do us all a great service. An 'ecosystem service' that we should all pay for but currently don't.
Temperate peatlands contain seven times more carbon than any other ecosystems and although peat only covers 3% of the worlds surface it holds more than twice as much carbon than all the worlds forest biomass. Peat is staggeringly important.
1.6% of the world's peatland is the equivalent of the entire global human green house gas emissions.
So for peats sake and for humankind sake lets not get complacent about peat use. We need to stop peat extraction, switch to alternatives and step up the pace of restoring damaged peatlands now.
Sorry should have added the non peat composts I used were rubbish which puts you off trying others.
JonathnWallace interesting points and taken on board but it is really about magnitude of emissions and think thousands of years of peat use comes way below the damage done in the 20Th century alone by planes and vehicles so we should concentrate on that,apparently quite possible for modern car to do 300 mile per gallon but strangely see no campaign to push this.
Some years ago the RSPB collaborated with (I think) Thames Water to produce a peat free compost which carried the RSPB logo on the bag. We used it extensively on our local reserve to germinate Phragmites for the reed bed. It worked well for these, probably not very demanding, seedlings. Haven't seen it available recently though!
Sooty
There are probably several points to be made here. First, the fact that some worked out peat cuttings (such as the Norfolk Broads!) have developed into habitats that are important in their own right for wildlife is not an argument for standing by and allowing the destruction of our remaining peatlands. Secondly, birds are very important but not the only important component of our biodiversity and loss of peatlands involves the loss of habitat for various plants and invertebrates many of which can only thrive in a peat bog. Thirdly, your point about the relative insignificance of the total carbon emission from peat use alongside, say, the "cloud that is supposed to be China" is an argument for doing nothing. Climate change is the result of millions of people across the globe each contributing to emissions of greenhouse gases. Individually we each contribute a trivial amount but it is when you sum it all together that the problem appears. Consequently, if we are to address the issue we need to look at every individual source of emission and do what we can to reduce it and hopefully then collectively all of these lesser reductions will amount to a large one.
Jonathan Wallace