As a major consumer of water, Ramm Botanicals (www.ramm.com.au) needed to address their water usage in 2005 when level 3 water restrictions were introduced by the local Wyong Shire Council. Reducing water consumption by 24 percent was a ‘big ask’ but considering the company was already addressing the issue, it managed to achieve a remarkable 54 percent reduction in town water use. They achieved this through a combination of installing rainwater tanks and changing their plant product offerings to a range of water-wise Australian native plants. Managing Director, Jeff Cooke said the most important aspect of the company’s water management program was water capture. "On our main lab and nursery building, which has a roof catchment of 4,040 square metres, we replaced the roof and installed new guttering. This water feeds our main storage tank of 270,000 litres." Water from this tank is pumped to a smaller 60,000 litre holding tank which gravity feeds the nursery. Plumbing was also installed on the main greenhouse structure, a roof catchment of 1,125 square metres This water is caught in a network of three smaller tanks with a combined holding capacity of 7,500 litres. "This is more than sufficient water for the many thousands of young plants housed in the structure," Jeff said. Water is captured from a total of 5,165 square metres of roof surface and as Jeff points out: "since 1mm of rainfall across one square metre of roof amounts to 1 litre of water, our catchment captures 5,165 litres for each millimetre of rainfall." And when there’s a torrential downpour equivalent to 20mm of rainfall, there’s an astonishing 103,300 litres of water available! "We need rain every six to eight weeks to avoid switching over to town water and fortunately, this has been the case for most of the past three years. These measures have created valuable long-term water savings for their business and also for customers who landscape with native plant species. As for the cost of installation, it’s an investment of capital works that Jeff says will take many years to recover, simply because town water is so cheap. "Nevertheless, we always aim to minimise our environmental impact and to be an environmentally conscious community member." Being more sustainable has meant changing the product range. "High pest tolerance or resistance is an important factor in our decision to release a plant," Jeff says. "Such a selection criteria minimises the amount of sprays necessary to control pests and diseases." Where possible, the company uses chemical alternatives to controls pests – a form of biological control, called IPM (integrated pest management), uses hypoaspis miles (a predatory mite) to feed on fungus gnats larvae and thrips pupae. They also use biodegradable chemicals wherever possible. "We are currently undertaking a commercial trial of a fully biodegradable pot for use by production nurseries, especially as the nursery industry has long relied on the plastic pot." According to Jeff various studies have found that over 80 percent of plastic ends up in landfill and, since plastic is not inert, this endangers the environment through leaked leachate into ground and surface water. "Plastic can take a thousand years to break down, although this doesn’t mean it decomposes, rather, just breaks down into smaller pieces. Our biodegradable pots are made of just two fully renewable resources; coconut fibre and rubber latex. "The pot not only breaks down naturally, you can plant ‘pot and all’. The plant’s roots easily penetrate the walls of the pot and happily grows during the six to 12 months it takes for the pot to break down in the soil."
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