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Solar & Sustainability

It's been an exciting couple of weeks for us, as we've just launched our new teas and now we're taking a big step to reduce our environmental impact. 

 

We set up Gathered & Grown so we could grow and make our range of teas and products without having a negative impact on the environment, and a key part of this is reducing the electricity we use as we grow, pick, dry and process our herbs. Our custom-made drying tunnel already minimises the energy needed as it uses the sun to provide the heat needed to dehydrate our herbs once picked, but we still use electricity to run the fans and the small specialist, dehydrators we use for our flowers and petals. 

 

This is why we're thrilled to see our solar panels going up. We always expected solar to be a good way of reducing our carbon emissions, but it wasn't until we had a carbon audit and support from East Devon District Council and Carbon Sense that we realised just how much of an impact it could have. As our busiest time for picking and drying is from May to August (when the days are longest, the temperature is highest and we have our driers full of fresh herbs 24/7), adding solar generation to our south-facing barn will mean that over the course of a year we should create enough electricity to cover all of our usage as we make our teas. 

 

In short, this means that your cup of herbal tea will not only taste great but it will leave our farm having been grown and dried without any food miles, chemicals or carbon emissions. There's still a lot we want to do improve our land for wildlife and biodiversity, further reduce our impact across packaging and postage and improve the ways that we sequester or lock in carbon, but that's for another post! 

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