Reducing our carbon footprint
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The Edinburgh Biomes project is a key part of the Botanics’ commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, with carbon savings of 17% expected through the creation of a new, efficient Energy Centre and the restoration of our Glasshouses.
Other projects, such as the purchase of electric vehicles and horticultural tools, will help to reduce our carbon footprint even further, while the recycling of glass from our Palm Houses will help to minimise waste.
Watch the short film below to hear more about how we’re reducing our carbon footprint.
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Watch: Reducing our carbon footprint
- Read video transcript
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Time Description [Erin Miller, Sustainability and Energy Manager] The Biomes project's going to have a huge impact on our journey to net zero. The glasshouses take up about 50% of our carbon footprint, and therefore the refurbishments and the upgrades that we're doing as part of this project are really going to make a difference in terms of our heat efficiency and the amount of energy required to heat and maintain the living collection. As part of our decarbonisation efforts in the garden, we're looking to electrify our fleet, and our hand tools as well. So we've recently purchased electric lawnmowers, an electric wood chipper, some strimmers and hedge trimmers and leaf blowers that are all electric. That allows us to move away from fossil fuels. [Angela Pllu, Environment and Sustainability Manager, Balfour Beatty] This was a really good project where we really wanted to put all our efforts into making it as low carbon as possible. We recognized from an early point that there was going to be a lot of glass waste produced on this project, so we wanted to really implement the circular economy and try and find a local home for that to be used. We took some of the glass off, crushed it to a very specific size, and we're using it in an ultra-low carbon concrete mix that will be brought back into the garden in the forms of benches and some PV tools. By the end of this project, we hope to have a really good set of updated knowledge that other projects can share and learnings that we can share wider within the industry.
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