Biodegradable Netting - At Last

Christmas tree conversations
There are about 1,800 Christmas trees waiting to be sold at Whinlatter Forest. As usual, they arrive on large pallets, each individual tree enclosed in a plastic net. This year, instead of just us few staff struggling for days to tear them open and manhandling them into their respective bays,  the gallant band of Practical Conservation volunteers set to with a will and with a ‘Yo Heave Ho Ho Ho’, got them sorted in no time.

For many years we have deplored the fact that not only do the trees arrive in plastic but when we re-net them at the sales point they are encased in the stuff again. Our Active woods manager has made it a mission this year to source a greener netting product. To her great credit she at last found a biodegradable, and actually green, cotton net. It had to be shipped over from Germany but we still felt that cutting the plastic waste down by 50% was a bonus.
Certainly, we all felt very much more comfortable saying that it could be composted. How to dispose of the tree itself? – well that’s another matter!