Carbon Innovation Fund

Carbon Innovation Fund is a three-year, £3.5M partnership between Co-op Foundation and Co-op. It’s funded through Co-op donations raised from the sale of compostable carrier bags in the UK and our own Co-op Foundation funds.   This fund is now coming to a close after three years and there will be no future rounds of funding. 

Focus of the fund

In round one of our fund, we funded a broad range of amazing initiatives working to reduce the environmental impact of the food and farming sector.

In round two Our second round focused specifically on innovative projects reducing the UK’s reliance on soy-containing feed and synthetic fertilisers. 

For round three we focused on sustainable ways to create a thriving food and farming sector, without the need to damage important peat soils across the UK. 

Why peat? 

Co-op were the first UK supermarket to ban peat-containing compost from shelves in 2021, focusing on peat-free alternatives only.  We know that to protect our environment, we need to find sustainable solutions to make sure damaging peatlands is no longer the norm. 

In the UK alone, an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon are stored in peatlands. However, with almost 80% of UK peatland degraded, without any intervention to repair and preserve UK peatlands, their greenhouse gas emissions could exceed the equivalent of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.  

Peatland is often drained to grow crops and to allow livestock to graze. It is also often broken up to put the peat into compost as a growth aid. This is a major issue in terms of landscape degradation and biodiversity loss. Because of this, we want to focus our funding on ways to protect peatland while still providing the food we need to eat.