Her one-woman compost campaign once earned garden centre ban for former RSPB chief executive

                     

Baroness Young - banned

A FORMER chief executive of the RSPB has revealed how she was once banned from garden centres in Bedfordshire where the society has its HQ.

Back in 1990 when she took the reins, Barbara Young - now Baroness Young of Scone - was active in campaigning for a ban on compost obtained from peat bogs.

In a debate on environment improvement in the Lords, she recalled:  "I used to go to the local garden centre and insist that its staff took all the peat-free or reduced-peat products out from the back of their compost displays and put them at the front. 

"I did that for nine months until I was banned from that garden centre. 

"I subsequently went around all the garden centres in Bedfordshire and was systematically banned from one after the other."

Peat products continue to be sold in some garden centres but have largely been phased out over the past 35 years because unharvested peat bogs are recognised to be an important  habitat both as home to specialist species but also in helping to soak up carbon from the atmosphere.

In response to Baroness Young's comments, DEFRA minister Baroness Hayman of Ullock said: "We are committed to ending the sale of horticultural peat and peat-containing products by the end of this Parliament. 

"That is part of our ambition for this Parliament. We are working very closely with the sector to look at how we can make that transition."