With TEFA, climate protection and value creation go hand in hand

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November 2021, the participating countries agreed as never before that the global energy transition must be accelerated in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This means that greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced even faster.

Besides CO₂, methane is one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. It not only enters the atmosphere from leaks in natural gas plants and from factory farming of cattle, but is also emitted in gigantic quantities from wetlands and moors. These permanently store very large amounts of carbon, which, however, escape as soon as the peat bogs are used for agriculture and drained or as soon as their surface is damaged.

In order to prevent the climate-damaging outgassing of the peatlands, the use of the wetlands should be abandoned in the future and alternatives for peat extraction should be sought. A sustainable solution for the mushroom industry, which currently cannot do without peat for the cultivation of mushrooms, is offered by our TEFA casing. It consists of corn straw and is thus completely peat-free. By using corn straw, which is produced in large quantities during the corn harvest, we not only protect the moors and curb greenhouse gas emissions, but also create added value for an agricultural residue. This is because the substrate made from corn stalks can partially replace the conventional black peat casing in mushroom cultivation. As a result, fewer wetlands need to be destroyed – a real contribution to climate protection and a step towards bio-economy.