Greener greens, with less waste
Te Waiharakeke - Marlborough herb and salad green growers Thymebank have switched from coal to wood waste and nut shells for their glasshouse heating.
Thymebank is decarbonising its covered cropping operations as part of a wider commitment to reducing the organisation’s carbon footprint.
A family business, the growers are committed to sustainability and providing New Zealanders with healthy greens with zero waste.
They are environmentalists, they are spray free and have alternative ways of managing pests.
Thymebank owner Leanne Roberts they have identified that energy use is also significant.
“Converting the boiler to run on wood chips and nut shells means now our energy outputs are cleaner, and we are also removing something from the waste stream which would ordinarily go to a landfill."
Thymebank also discovered operating costs fell after switching to from coal to biomass. They no longer had to pay for coal and eliminated their obligation to pay for carbon emissions, with ongoing production costs lower.
“This means we can produce our greens more reasonably which is good news for the consumer,” said Roberts.
New Zealand's weather and climate is variable from season to season, which impacts the ability to grow fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers, and fungi.
Growing fresh produce in greenhouses means that New Zealanders can get fresh, locally grown food at any time of year, and producers can continue to trade.
Thymebank are domestic producers, supplying supermarkets, restaurants, and cafes from Invercargill to Palmerston North.
Thymebank received co-funding as part of EECA’s technology demonstration fund to help with a low-cost conversion of their existing coal boiler.
The investment enabled Thymebank to use an arborist biowaste product to heat their glasshouses providing a waste to energy solution and removing 102 tCO2e annually.
Lisa was born in Auckland at the start of the 1970s, living in a small campsite community on the North Shore called Browns Bay. She spent a significant part of her life with her grandparents, often hanging out at the beaches. Lisa has many happy memories from those days at Browns Bay beach, where fish were plentiful on the point and the ocean was rich in seaweed. She played in the water for hours, going home totally “sun-kissed.” “An adorable time to grow up,” Lisa tells me.
Lisa enjoyed many sports; she was a keen tennis player and netballer, playing in the top teams for her age right up until the family moved to Wellington. Lisa was fifteen years old, which unfortunately marked the end of her sporting career. Local teams were well established in Wellington, and her attention was drawn elsewhere.