Our goal is to protect local environments from invasive plants using eco-friendly methods. Going one step further, we’re focused on harnessing the extraordinary ability of invasive plants such as Japanese knotweed to absorb carbon, reducing CO₂ levels in the atmosphere.

We recognise our business activities create waste and emissions to land, air and water which we seek to mitigate as best we can. We don’t like adding excessive amounts of dangerous herbicides to the environment, that find their way to watercourses. As far back as 2008 we thought it eco-crazy to dig up knotweed infested soils from one site only to dump it in a landfill site, many miles away. We wanted a zero-waste solution, so thinking caps went on and our R&D team came up with Xtract^TM, our screening process to separate and remove knotweed, that today saves thousands of tonnes of perfectly good soil filling up precious landfill sites across the UK.

The Xtract™ process results in tonnes of rhizome and root material being removed from the ground every year. We hate waste, so got the R&D team deciding how best to deal with this plant material. The R&D breakthrough came with the production of biochar from invasive weeds. We created a prototype biochar retort which pyrolyzes the material, rendering it inert.

A few additional steps create biochar, a superb soil conditioner which improves soil fertility and yields of desired plants. But more importantly, the biochar is 99% carbon, captured from the atmosphere by the invasive plants and then stored in the ground where it remains for hundreds if not thousands of years - carbon sequestration its called by climate scientists.