The Green Tractor Scheme was recently invited by the South East Rivers Trust in conjunction with the Preventing Plastic Pollution project, to present their work on supporting farmers with the recycling of agri-plastics. The project, which wrapped up in March, was seeking a better understanding of the impacts of farm plastic pollution, particularly on the aquatic environment, and potential solutions to help reduce these impacts. Along with the many activities the organisation has conducted in the last twelve months, they collated key players, such as Green Tractor, to present how they are working to reduce the impact of farm plastic pollution. In addition to Green Tractor, there were presentations given on a recycling scheme set up to recycle tree guards and work done by another organisation working to make fresh produce packaging more sustainable.

Our brand champion, Joe Farmer, provided an overview of how Green Tractor came to be, what it has been doing over the last twelve months, and our ambitions for the next twelve months. The audience was mostly comprised of growers and farmers and so it was brilliant to showcase Green Tractor's work to our target audience. Indeed it was telling that Joe fielded a lot of the questions after the presentations were done as the audience was keen to learn more about how to manage their farm plastic waste correctly.

The audience was mostly comprised of fruit growers and they were particularly inquisitive about finding out where they can recycle their irrigation piping. Upon conversations with the growers, it became apparent that right now most of them put the pipe in skips. They informed us it was due to a lack of awareness of recycling schemes like Green Tractor. Incidentally why as Green Tractor, we pride ourselves on speaking at webinars like this! The growers in this webinar were very keen on recycling rather than disposing of their material unsustainably, and therefore, following the webinar, our founding member Agri.Cycle has been working closely with The South East Rivers Trust to develop an initiative to enable growers in this practice. The project aims to enable the extended network of The South East Rivers Trust to recycle their piping and from that any other farm plastic they may have.

Green Tractor continues to advocate for sustainable management of farm plastic waste and works tirelessly to promote the scheme and raise awareness of its recycling initiatives. If like the growers of the Kent and Medway area, you have farm plastic you need to recycle, please get in touch with The Green Tractor Scheme. Whether you're an individual farmer looking to recycle, or an organisation looking to promote recycling to your suppliers, please get in touch!

If you would like to learn more on the "Preventing Plastic Pollution" project, visit their website here - Home - Preventing Plastic Pollution