Happy World Earth Day! This year’s theme around World Earth Day is ‘Invest in our Planet’. Our growers invest in our planet each and every year. Their most recent investment has been planting pollen & nectar mix on their farms to boost the number and diversity of bumblebees and other pollinators and provide a habitat for natural predators like hoverflies, ladybirds, and ground beetles.
Seed mixes containing a range of valuable pollen and nectar sources, including phacelia, vetch, red clover, and ox-eye daisy, bring an explosion of pollinator activity. Pollinators are beneficial for our berries and many other flowering plants and crops.
Pollinators are estimated to contribute the equivalent of over £500 million a year to UK agriculture and food production by improving crop quality and quantity.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/public-urged-to-help-bees-butterflies-and-other-pollinators
Other ways we’re investing in our planet include:
· Reducing plastic and working towards 100% recyclable packaging – over the next 12 months, we’ll eliminate over 42 million bubble pads from our global supply chain.
· Reducing our fruit waste – at the start of 2023, we reached our milestone of donating 100,000 punnets of surplus fruit to FareShare.
· Reducing our carbon footprint – our Scottish growers have replaced 1,433,000kWh per year of electricity from the grid by investing in renewable energy sources like solar, wind and hydroelectric, equivalent to the annual electricity use of 341 average UK households.
