UK Nature and Environment

In the third round of the Carbon Innovation Fund, a partnership between Co-op and their charity, the Co-op Foundation, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust was selected amongst seven organisations across the UK to develop 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, and play a role in cooling the planet, supporting biodiversity and reducing flood risk.

However, because peatland is also nutrient rich, it is sometimes drained to grow crops or 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.