A big welcome to our round three Carbon Innovation Fund partners!
“Our lowland peatlands are in trouble. Drained and converted to agricultural use, they are responsible for 3 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions, along with becoming increasingly difficult to farm. We believe that wetter farming, or paludiculture, could provide a sustainable solution to both of these issues, restoring the carbon storage capacity of our peat whilst keeping them productive and financially viable for our farmers.”
Sarah Johnson, Head of Peatland Recovery, Lancashire Wildlife Trust
Today we’re announcing our round three Carbon Innovation Fund (CIF) partners. These seven organisations, based across the UK, are developing innovative ways to grow the food we need without damaging precious UK peatlands.
Peatlands are some of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on earth, storing twice as much carbon as the world’s forests. They help to cool the planet, support biodiversity and reduce the risk of flooding. Peatland is nutrient rich, so is sometimes drained to grow crops and broken up to put the peat into compost. This degradation of peatland causes greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss and destroys some of the UK’s most important ecosystems.
By funding organisations that are working to produce the food we need without harming these peatlands, we’re building sustainable communities of the future together.
“Thank you, CIF, we squealed with joy when we heard we’d been chosen as a partner! Our diverse team of enthusiastic volunteers and experts are so excited to ramp up our research and get proper nerdy and mucky transforming waste into a credible alternative to peat in potting composts. Thanks for helping us in our mission to protect peatlands and to explore and celebrate waste-based composts.”
Everyone at Criw Compostio, Machynlleth, Cymru
Our partnership with Co-op
This is the third round of our three-year, £3.5m partnership with Co-op, our largest environmental partnership to date.
The £1m from this round of grant-making adds to the £1.4m from round one, and £1.1m in round two. CIF is funded through Co-op donations from the sale of compostable carrier bags in the UK, as well as the Foundation’s own funds.
We’re excited to be working with organisations innovating in different ways to avoid peatland damage across the country.
“We are delighted beyond words to have been awarded the Carbon Innovation Fund from Co-op and the Co-op Foundation. As a community-based charity whose aim is to promote health and wellbeing in Uist, Tagsa Uibhist are deeply concerned that many families in our island communities cannot afford basic food items to keep them healthy and well. With food insecurity on the rise, this amazing fund will help us transform our local food system so that it works for people and the planet, ensuring sustainable local produce is both accessible and affordable to all without damaging our beautiful yet fragile Western Isles eco-system.”
Alex Mackenzie, Local Food Development Manager, Tagsa Uibhist
CIF is our way of building sustainable communities as part of our strategy, ‘Building communities of the future together’.
It is also a part of Co-op’s effort to protect peatlands in the UK. In 2021 it was the first UK supermarket to completely end the sale of peat-based bagged compost across its stores. In 2023, Co-op announced a three-year partnership with the RSPB, donating a £1million from the sale of its compostable carrier bags to contribute to their peatland restoration projects.
Our new partners
We can’t wait to work with our new partners, listed below:
- Algae Products International Ltd which has been awarded £150k to develop soil additives from algae, without using peat or emitting carbon. These soil additives could then be used for fertiliser, or even as alternatives to grazing for animals.
- Lancashire Wildlife Trust, which has received £148,181 to develop pioneering sustainable techniques for growing food crops on peat soils. By growing on peatland that’s more saturated with water, they hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions whilst maintaining economically viable food production.
- Tagsa Uibhist which has received £149,499 to support the development of a more local food system on Uist in the Outer Hebrides in a way that will protect the peatland in the area. This will not only alleviate food insecurity, but also protect peatlands and their fragile Western Isles ecosystem.
- Derbyshire Wildlife Trust which has received £81,831 to work with farmers to develop action plans on how to maintain or improve their farm’s income and calorie output, while delivering lowland peatland restoration and sustainable farming.
- Wildlife Trust BCN which has received £150k to test new ways to sow, manage and monitor crops sustainably on peatlands and test their suitability as food for livestock. This will demonstrate wet farming techniques that can be scaled up if needed, all while protecting peat soils.
- Criw Compostio which has received £122,957 for their 3-year project which looks to de-mystify food waste management, regulation and processing and create a unique peat-free compost for the community.
- Rhyze Mushrooms Co-op CIC which has received £148,200 to develop compost using worms that is easily replicable and at a large enough scale to be used on farms. This method would make it possible for market gardens to produce their own high-quality peat-free compost to grow vegetables.
Sign up to our blog to find out more about our partners and for future funding opportunities.