The last waltz
End of an era as Bord na Móna calls time on peat harvesting
IT WAS an ad that warmed the most chilled of bones and cold of hearts. Toasty toes, a smiling baby, contented kids, the comfy curling up on the sofa and the kindling of romance, all drawn to the dancing flames of a blazing open fire while the cosy lilting melody of the Marino Waltz played.
Bord na Móna put a rosy glow on life and living rooms in the bleak 1980s and the iconic status of the peat briquette was assured for all time.
Coming a close second was the company’s premier moss peat product. The Shamrock name and symbol became the go-to for amateur and professional growers alike.
What few of the buying public knew was the damage the enchantment in their hearth was inflicting on the natural world beyond the curtains pulled tight to keep out winter’s worst.
Or the irony that the compost they used to produce fine flowers and fruits was destroying the rich natural biodiversity that once thrived on the bogs.
Stripping the bogs has lost Ireland one of nature’s great control mechanisms: peatlands soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through their mosses and lock in the carbon from decaying plants and organisms.
Cutting and burning the peat releases carbon stored for millennia and renders the remaining denuded land incapable of doing its job.
Warming the solid fuel-burning, insulationBord lacking, heat-hungry homes of the past 70 years, and transforming clods of clay to fertile beds and baskets, has contributed to global warming. That rosy glow came at the cost of setting fire to the planet.
Bord na Móna’s decision to put away the matches is driven by several factors: the science that says we must stop using fossil fuels; national policy as set out in the 2019 Climate Action Plan and its forthcoming and likely tougher successor; and legal challenges.
For years Friends of the Irish Environment and An Taisce have fought to preserve the bogs, unpicking practices in the Irish countryside with the aid of European directives. Last summer Bord na Móna called a temporary halt to peat harvesting to let the latest round of court battles reach their conclusion.
Now the company has decided to unfurl its own finish line before the courts, as it seems increasingly likely, do it for them.
Already, last November, na Móna announced a major peatland rehabilitation scheme with €108m of public money and €18m of company funds to be invested in rewetting and nurturing 80,000 acres of industrially harvested bog.
It is building wind farms; it has diversified into waste collection, recycling and recovery; and it has developed a range of other home-heating fuels from the by-products of the wood industry and what we’re told are sustainable forests.
And last month the last two peat-powered electricity generating plants in the country shut down for good.
So the milestone that is the company’s decision to stop all peat harvesting is neither sudden nor unexpected.
But it is also not entirely the end. While Bord na Móna’s reserves run down, replacements are already making their way into the country.
They come from the peatlands of countries such as Latvia, their carbon cost even higher because of the fuel used in their transport.
There are also other compost producers in Ireland aside from Bord na Móna and there are small scale peat-cutters harvesting for personal and local use.
It may be the end of an era for Bord na Móna peat briquettes, but it is only the beginning of the epic task of learning to value and rescue what remains of the bogs.