BORD NA Móna’s multimillion-pound sales of peat compost have been targeted by an alliance of British environmental bodies, led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), who have called for higher taxes to stop gardeners from using it.
British sales of Bord na Móna compost grew sharply over the last decade, following curbs on extraction from UK bogs.
Calling for a £1 (€1.18) levy on every bag sold and its eventual banning, the alliance said peat compost is responsible for 630,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year in the UK and its cutting is destroying Irish bogs.
“It really is incredible that a product as hugely damaging to our environment as peat is still being widely consumed in the UK,” said the RSPB’s conservation director Mark Avery.
The UK’s department of the environment is due to report in March on ways to cut the use of peat compost, but campaigners want action taken by chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne in his budget later that month.
Taxation is needed to change gardeners’ behaviour, said Mr Avery. “Studies have shown that good peat-free composts work just as well – Kew Gardens is just one notable example of a peat-free garden which is thriving. We have got rid of lead in our petrol, CFCs in our aerosols and DDT in our countryside – so why is this dinosaur industry still lumbering along causing untold damage?”
Catherine O’Connell, chief executive of the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, said: “Irish peat bogs are being torn apart to supply British gardeners”.
Bord na Móna sells nearly €60 million worth of peat compost every year, with nearly half of that going to Britain, though it has been reducing the percentage of peat used and has already pledged to stop selling it to non-commercial gardeners in the UK by 2020.
Two-thirds of peat compost sold in the UK comes from Ireland.
The British government had ordered that 90 per cent of all compost should be peat-free by 2010, but only 58 per cent of the product sold two years ago fulfilled that instruction.
A Bord na Móna spokesman said the semi-State also sells a peat-free compost, Grow Wise, in the UK and elsewhere and added that none of the peat used comes from Special Areas of Conservation.
Besides the RSPB, the campaign, which wants the levy used to restore damaged British bogs, is supported by the Wildlife Trusts, Plantlife, Buglife, the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and Butterfly Conservation, as well as compost suppliers Vital Earth.
Peat compost is popular with gardeners because it absorbs large amounts of water, but consumer magazine Which? recently found that the four best products on the UK market were peat-free.