End peat extraction for gardening compost by 2027 and fund the transition for UK growers

UK peatlands store around 3 billion tonnes of carbon. That is more than all the forests in Britain, France, and Germany combined. Healthy peatlands slowly accumulate carbon. Drained peatlands release it, continuously, for decades.

The government committed in 2021 to banning peat compost in retail sales by 2024. That deadline quietly slipped. It then slipped again. The current position is a partial restriction on bagged compost for amateur gardeners, with a long list of exemptions for professional horticulture that means roughly two thirds of peat extraction continues untouched.

Set a hard deadline. No peat in any compost, professional or retail, from January 2027. Fund a £50 million transition programme for UK nurseries and growers to move to peat-free alternatives, which are already widely used in the Netherlands and Germany without apparent disaster.

I grew up on the edge of a raised bog. It was drained in the 1960s to plant conifers that have since been felled at a loss. The bog has not recovered. It will not recover in my lifetime. These are not renewable resources in any meaningful sense. We are mining the ecological past for bedding compost.