Vitacress Promotes Biodiversity With Environment Week

Leading salad, herbs and watercress producer, Vitacress last week celebrated biodiversity with its second annual Environment Week.

The aim of this year’s Environment Week was to engage employees across the business to understand why the natural environment is important and how it can be protected and enhanced.

During the week, staff took part in a number of activities, including aquatic sampling to review water quality based on the different wildlife and plant life found there. Talks and site tours took place at Vitacress Salads in St Mary Bourne, Hampshire and Vitacress Herbs in West Sussex. Vitacress was assisted by its partner organisations, the Manhood and Wildlife Heritage Group (MWHG) which conducted a wildlife survey and moth trapping at Runcton; and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust which hosted the aquatic sampling sessions at St Mary Bourne.

During the week, a donation of £2,000 was made to the MWHG to provide funding for their environmental activities and sponsorship of the Eileen Savill Young Persons Environment Award.

Vitacress’ Environment Week was inspired by Vitacress’ environment manager Leah Mathias-Collins. Last year’s activities won ‘Best Environmental Initiative’ at The Grower Awards which took place in February this year.

Commenting on the initiative, Leah Mathias-Collins, environment manager at Vitacress said: “Environment Week is a great opportunity to really engage our staff with the natural environment, which is so important to the work we do here at Vitacress. As a farming business we depend on the land to produce our salads and herbs, and we work hard to look after our natural environment so that what we do is as sustainable as possible.”

Vitacress’ Steve’s Leaves is the only Conservation Grade certified ‘Fair to Nature’ salad brand. In practice this means 10% of our productive land is dedicated to creating habitats for wildlife and boosting biodiversity. This is achieved by following a scientifically validated set of protocols specific to each site to protect and enhance the wildlife and biodiversity.