Sustainability

Our aim with incredicompost® has been to develop a premium-quality product that brings consistency and reliability back to the compost market – something that has been missing since the increased use of green waste materials in many well-known brands, in a bid to reduce their peat content. Nurseries and commercial suppliers, including ourselves, are indeed researching higher performance peat-reduced products but results are disappointing.
We use Irish peat, responsibly sourced from non-contentious sites and produced according to high industry standards to ensure ethical bog management.
We’ve avoided green waste at all costs. We’ve seen evidence of all manner of unsuitable ingredients turning up in bagged green waste compost including plastic, glass, and metal. There has also been evidence of herbicide residues making it into some of these blends, too.
To reduce the peat in our blend we have included wood fibre, sourced from Irish saw mills, actually making use of a surplus by-product. This wood fibre is graded by chip size, so each time we make a new batch we can guarantee consistency from our ingredients, leading to consistent performance from the compost.
We will look to reduce the peat content further as we continue to develop the brand, but only where our ongoing comprehensive trials show no reduction in performance.
Our Irish suppliers are subsidiary companies of Klassmann-Deilmann Group, the world’s largest growing media supplier.
In 2012 it drew up and adopted sustainability guidelines for all suppliers, laying down requirements for environmental standards, as well as business ethics. Suppliers are evaluated on their optimisation measures regarding the management of resources, minimisation of ecological damage, adoption of a precautionary approach, and the promotion of environmental responsibility and environmental technologies.
Klasmann-Deilmann has been certified to the internationally valid environmental standard ISO 14001 since 2008. The core element of this certification is an environmental policy geared to sustainability, based on ecologically acceptable and controllable environmental-management processes. Klasmann-Deilmann’s environmental policy includes an environmental management system that is implemented at all its locations. The responsibility for humankind, the environment and future generations enshrined therein ultimately means harmonising products and production processes with defined environmental targets, taking economic aspects into account and based on applicable laws and legal regulations. Implementation of the company’s environmental policies and the efficacy of the environmental-management system are regularly audited, improved and updated by Klasmann-Deilmann as well as independent institutes.
Following successful outcomes in Germany, Klassmann is currently preparing projects aimed at rehabilitating former extraction sites in Ireland for the benefit of flora and fauna.
Worldwide, there are around 4,074,000 km of peatland, 86% of which is in a natural state. Just under 10% of bogs has been drained in recent decades – the resulting peat-extraction areas cover just  2,000 km. (= 0.05% of the world’s total area of peatlands).
(Source: International Peat Society Report 2010)
We will look to further reduce the peat content in our products as we continue to develop the brand, but only where our ongoing comprehensive trials show no reduction in performance.