Blog: Zoos have a duty to source their plants sustainably

Do you know where your purchased plants come from? In our latest blog, the BIAZA Plant Working Group details how zoos/aquariums can work together to source plants sustainably:

Altogether, BIAZA members purchase plants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds each year. This could be on a large scale for a major new development, few ornamental plants to top up a garden area, or material for a new browse plantation. But what do we know about where these plants came from and how they were grown?

Although from a distance the horticultural industry looks very ‘green’ and nature-friendly, there are many factors which can impact the sustainability of the plants we procure – harmful pesticides, peat-based composts, a multitude of plastic by-products, and the intense use of energy and water to grow them.

The horticultural industry is aware of these issues, and is pro-actively trying to address them. So how can we assess which suppliers are working hard to improve their sustainable practices? And, which are selling plants that have the lowest environmental impact?

In 2021, the BIAZA Plant Working Group produced the ‘Sustainable Plant Procurement Guidelines’. The document looks at sustainability from an environmental and socio-economic perspective, and lists a series of guiding principles to help BIAZA members be as sustainable as possible when sourcing plant material.

To assist with applying the guiding principles, the Plant Working Group has begun a project to collate relevant information from plant suppliers by sending out sustainable plant procurement questionnaires and will share the responses on BIAZA's Member's area (members can see existing responses here). The idea behind this approach is that rather than each zoo contacting their suppliers, and each supplier responding to multiple zoos, the information is centralised in a single repository. This not only saves time and effort for all involved, but also standardises the process.

Using the information is straightforward; simply find a supplier's name and review their reply. One important point to be aware of, is that the repository's purpose is not to rank suppliers, but to enable members to make informed decisions, based on the information provided.

We would like to build on this work by adding more plant suppliers, and we would love your input. Please contact the BIAZA Executive Office via [email protected] with suppliers you would like to see included, and they will send them the questionnaire and add the response to the database.

This is an ongoing process, and as well as helping individual zoos and aquariums improve their sustainability credentials, hopefully our combined buying power will help to accelerate the horticulture industry in its journey to have much more positive impact on the planet.

- Philip Esseen​, Head of Plants at Chester Zoo, BIAZA Plant Working Group Vice Chair

- Sven Seiffert - Curator of Plants at ZSL, BIAZA Plant Working Group Member, Chair of EAZA Zoo Horticulture.