Moorland is an ecosystem that does an essential job of preserving the environment. On top of being a habitat for important native species of birds, insects and mammals and flowers and plants, moorland itself is a wonderful absorber of CO₂.
For its size, moorland absorbs more CO₂ than grassland, forest and deserts. According to data in the excellent “Moor Atlas”* moors cover only 500 million hectares, but stores 600 billion tonnes of CO₂. Forest, on the other hand, covers 372 million hectares, but stores only 372 billion tonnes of CO₂: https://www.boell.de/de/2023/01/10/was-ist-ein-moor
Moors are often dried out to create land appropriate for building towns and for agriculture. The act of drying out moors releases incredible amounts of stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, rewatering moors can reverse that.
However, another activity takes place that also destroys moorland: extracting the rich soil – peat – for use in garden nurseries to help grow plants, which we then buy in supermarkets and garden centres and plant in our gardens.
And although these days bags of soil that you can buy from a supermarket are clearly marked when they contain no peat, and therefore easy to buy, plants themselves do not contain this information. It is very easy to unwittingly buy a new plant for your garden that has been grown using soil extracted from precious moorland. The act of planting such a plant in your garden contributes to CO₂ emissions.
For this reason, part of the Raincheck mission is to stop purchasing and planting plants in pots, only growing from seed in future. Unless provenance can be proven and no use of peat can be guaranteed.
*produced by a collaboration of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland and the Michael Succow Stiftung, Partner im Greifswald Moor Centrum. https://www.boell.de/de/mooratlas
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