Climate-friendly gardening
Last updated Wednesday 30 April 2008
Nip your emissions in the bud
Those blessed with green fingers may live in fear of the phrase 'hosepipe ban' but, in terms of climate change, dousing our daffs is the least of the problems our gardens cause. Watering plants accounts for 6% of our domestic water use, and a day's water use emits just 24g of CO2 - less than the weight of a small packet of crisps.
The real climate culprits? Our mushrooming purchases of garden gear. Think petrol mowers, paving, tropical garden furniture and peaty composts. A single patio heater emits more CO2 in a year than the average Afghani.
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It's Not Easy Being Green: installing a rainwater harvester
Find out how to install a rainwater harvester in your garden
In this article:
How will it make a difference?
Pub Fact
- We use 70% more water today than we did 40 years ago
- A patio heater emits the same amount of CO2 in a year as you'd generate travelling by train for 800 miles
- An hour's use of a petrol lawnmower releases more than 1kg of CO2
- On hot summer days, when supplies are tightest, over 70% of the water supply may be used for watering gardens
- A single tree can absorb 1 tonne of CO2 over its 40 year lifespan - give or take massive variation
According to a recent survey, about a third of British gardeners are worried that global warming is affecting their gardens - but there's growing evidence that the reverse is also true. Here are some of the ways our gardening helps emissions to grow:
- According to the carbon offset company Reduce Your CO2, swapping your petrol lawnmower for a manual can cut emissions by 36kg of CO2 every year - and knock £18 off your annual spend
- Most of our peat use is in our gardens. Peat bogs store twice as much carbon as all the world's forest combined but every year an area of Eire ten times the size of Monaco is dug up
- The UK is the third largest importer of Vietnamese garden furniture - most of which comes from illegally-logged forests in South East Asia. Read more about the impact of deforestation on the climate it in our article, Buying Sustainable Wood
On top of that, although watering the garden may be down the list of climate change crimes, emissions from our water use can stack up:
- One litre of mains water emits about 0.75g of CO2 according to Waterwise
- Installing a rainwater butt can save 0.6kg of CO2 per year - equivalent to a three mile drive in your car - and up to £200 off your water bills, according to The Low Carbon Diet
- Watering with a sprinkler uses 138 times more water than watering with an old-fashioned watering can, while a garden hose can use almost as much water in an hour as an average family of four uses in a day
- Digging in a low volume irrigation system with a timer in a large garden can cut water use by half according to The Low Carbon Diet - and the time you spend watering the garden by about 90%
What's the debate?
High tech 'grey water' systems (which save and reuse shower water, washing machine water and so on) may be worse for the climate than simply using less water in the first place, research suggests. Due to the energy intensity of treating the recycled water, these systems can end up using a lot of electricity and emitting more CO2 than they save through reduced water use.
How do I do it?
- Avoid nitrogen-rich fertilisers - they require large amounts of fossil fuel to make and emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than CO2
- Add home-made compost (about a bucketful per square metre) to boost the amount of water and nutrients that soil can retain - and avoid store-bought, peat-based composts
- Go manual - buy a push mower and a watering can
- Choose sustainable wood for your garden furniture
- When you're paving, consider lower-emission alternatives to concrete. Made from recycled and reclaimed materials, they have catchy names like pulverised fuel ash or ground granulated blast furnace slag. Read more on the Environment Agency website
- Get low-carbon outdoor lighting, such as solar lights or LEDs
- Check with your water company or council whether there are grants available for water-saving equipment like rainwater butts
- Recycle wastewater from the kitchen and bathroom for use in the garden and toilets. Read our article on toilet water-savers
- Discover plants that can withstand long spells of heat, including French honeysuckle, Lavender, Iris, and Salvia, and water infrequently but thoroughly, at the base of the plant
- Avoid patio heaters
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In order to move the water about and keep it from stagnating I have a small 12volt pump (£12) with a 12volt motor cycle battery (£10) and a length of tubing. The pumps can be purchased from Caravan supply shops and the battery from a good electrical supplier.
I also use a pond pump 240volt which costs about £25 at Lidl when on offer. This helps me water quickly from butt to tank.
As for water harvesting. If you don't mind blue 250 litre water buts you can obtain them free from wine merchants as I did. I have now a total of 7 x 250 litre butts plus one large 650 litre tank. The rain water is collected into the water butts and some of it I filter and store in the 650 litre tank.
See above: "A single patio heater emits more CO2 in a year than the average Afghani." I have a good idea of the energy needed to drive, boil a kettle or tumble dry, so can relate to the CO2 I may be responsible for. I have no real concept of how much CO2 Osama Bin Laden /any other Afghan uses.
If you will make comparisons such as 'it's the size of x football pitches' then keep it to something we might have a concept of. I still don't know how 'bad' my patio heater is. Better or worse than a gas BBQ? a petrol mower?
Avoiding them is not quite the right advice either
The action items are great. Lot's of info, especially for those just leaning about carbond footfrpints, and how to reduce their carbon footprint. However, when you reead about an action you are already doing, there is no option to click that when reading about each seed. For instance, on fashion and clothes, the only options were a yes or no. How about adding an already do it button to click on??
Climate Friendly Gardening is really easy as you can install a water butt to water your plants with. You can weed your garden every week so you are not watering the weeds and use a home made compost when potting plants. Oh and also reuse the plants pots so you are not putting them in a bin which then goes to landfill.
A filter can be quite expensive. But actually the filters cost only a few pounds each and I obtained mine on eBay. They are also sold to window cleaners using water fed poles and R0-Man are the best company to buy filters from. The housing for the filters, once again RO-man are the best, but if you want a cheaper one try eBay/ These filters are used for household water cleaning and should not include a de-ioniser. Only window and car cleaners need to de-ionise the water. The idea if the filter is to remove the sediment from the rain water.
I have a length of down pipe and inside placed a 20 micro filtre followed by a second 5 micron. The water comes off my conservatory roof down the pipe into a butt with no sediment. From time to time I remove the filters and add the sediment in the compost. Overflow from this water butt feeds 2 other butts. Here alone I have now 750 litres of sediment free water to use on the garden and washing my car. (ppm 12)