Five Scottish swaps to help save the planet

This month is Organic September – and there are five organic, Scottish swaps you can make to help save the planet.

Soil Association Certification’s Organic September is a month-long campaign celebrating the benefits of organic food, farming, textiles and beauty.

Following a year of unprecedented environmental protest, we’re highlighting the easy, affordable swaps you can make to organic, Scottish-sourced products to help combat climate change.

Every day, the climate emergency dominates the headlines. With stories of melting ice caps, burning rainforests, and mass extinction, it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of the huge issues threatening our planet.

But this Organic September, why not take the opportunity to explore small, sustainable, Scottish-sourced swaps you can make which have a positive impact on the environment?

By choosing organic, you can help create havens for wildlife, improve the health of our soils, and lower carbon emissions.

Organic farming avoids chemicals, so wildlife thrives. Studies have shown that wildlife is 50% more abundant on organic farms because of the complete absence of manufactured herbicides and the severely restricted use of pesticides.

Our survival depends on our soil – 95% of our food comes from it! A tablespoon of healthy soil holds about 10 billion organisms, and healthy, organic soils help prevent flooding and droughts, acting like a sponge to store as much as one and a half Olympic swimming pools of water per hectare. Sadly, we’re losing about 30 football pitches of fertile soil every minute because of industrial farming techniques.

Healthy soils are also a major store of carbon, containing three times as much carbon as the atmosphere and five times as much as forests. If all UK farming was converted to organic, at least 1.3 million tonnes of carbon would be taken up by the soil each year – the equivalent of taking nearly 1 million cars off the road!

Here are five easy, affordable organic swaps – all from local, Scottish producers – you can make this Organic September:

Order an organic vegetable box

Drink organic milk

Start the day right with organic oats

Keep warm with organic wool 

Soothe your skin with organic skin care

Alison Muirhead, business development manager, Soil Association Certification, says: ‘Organic farming helps fight climate change through lowering emissions, restoring nature and avoiding harmful chemicals.

‘Choosing organic is a simple but powerful form of direct action; an action to improve our food system and part of a wider movement of change.

‘Anything we can encourage citizens to do from visiting an independent organic retailer to buying organic milk at the local supermarket to discovering more about what organic means or visiting their local organic farm or market, helps to support the organic movement.’

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