Sustainability

  Demeter Biochar: Sustainability and Carbon Sequestration

At Demeter we take our environmental responsibilities seriously and we seek to:

1. Ensure that our operations do no environmental harm and promote alternative soil management techniques that boost biodiversity and reduce the need to use fossil fuel derived herbicides/pesticides.

2. Promote and deliver Carbon Sequestration, what we mean by this is that by purchasing our products there will be less Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere than if you had not used biochar or bought a competing type of soil/yield enhancer.

We are mindful of how widespread “green washing” is and so we want to explicitly state what you get from a sustainability and Net Zero perspective when buying our products.

Feedstock Sourcing

All our biochar is produced in the UK from sustainably sourced waste biomass and meets the European Biochar Institute standard. The waste biomass if not turned into Biochar would have decomposed and released  carbon dioxide and methane - so by using Biochar you are preventing these emissions.

Supporting the Rural Economy.

Purchasing UK Biochar supports employment in the rural economy both within the forestry sector and via agriculturaldiversification.

Packaging

Our goal with packaging is to use materials that are capable of being readily recycled. The packaging used for our products is currently

Type

Material type

Recycling Status

Shipping Boxes

Cardboard

Readily recyclable

Horticultural Product Bags

MDOPE/PE-EVOH

Readily recyclable

Pet and Houseplant Product Bags

KRAFT PAPER+VMPET+POLY  

Capable of recycling but not

 

Delivery

We select our parcel delivery contractors based on their published carbon footprint data.

Carbon Sequestration

By using waste biomass, we are preventing the decomposition of the biomass into carbon dioxide and methane- both of which are major contributors to global heating. The conversion of the carbon in the waste to Biochar then creates a material that is proven to be stable in the ground for  thousands of years. During their lives, the trees remove carbon dioxide from the environment, converting it to biomass. When the biomass is made into Biochar, the carbon is locked into this new form and buried by you, rather than released into the atmosphere.