Leeds Friends of the Earth have been campaigning on local and national environmental issues for decades. Many of their achievements have not been recorded for posterity. We're keen to aknowedge all the hard work of campaigners over the years, so if you have any old articles or photos we'll add them to the archive.
2002 Saving The Peat Moors:
This year Yorkshire & the Humber FOE network have been actively campaigning on the peat front. In March FOE put pressure on corporate giants Scotts to stop their peat extraction on Hatfield Moors, Doncaster. 50 people joined a week-long Peat Alert! organised demo, to paint a banner saying ‘£17 million and still digging - Bog off Scotts’. Scotts have received £17 million from the Government to stop cutting peat on Thorne Moors and Wedholme Flow but not Hatfield Moors.
The day was marred by very heavy police presence and an Article 14 exclusion zone placed around the peat factory and Moors. FOE were refused permission to visit the factory to make a presentation to the site manager, despite nearly 17 promises of being allowed to do so, and were cornered off in a 50m long holding zone where the banner was duly painted and the diggersaurus costumes worn. After some heavy negotiation the Scotts site manager eventually came to the exclusion zone and was presented with a photo-history of the 6 year long peat campaign run by Leeds FOE to save Thorne and Hatfield Moors. At the end of May Friends of the Earth met with Scotts at their Hatfield bagging plant. Far from spelling out the way forward by increasing use of peat alternatives, they spent the meeting rubbishing various peat substitutes and committed themselves to greater imports of peat from eastern Europe. They are bog destroyers through and through. However they did concede the need for better labelling of horticultural products to give the peat content and they did commit themselves to the restoration of Thorne and Hatfield Moors (the very ones they have destroyed). In July a big peat conference was held in Scunthorpe. Friends of the Earth was there and again pressured Scotts to commit publicly to peat alternative production targets. They refused but looked petty in the process as B&Q were there who have already made a comitment. Last month further forays went ahead on Hatfield .
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