‘’Cooperation with different partners led to an inspiring sustainable project.’’
Hendrik Vandorpe (Tree Nursery Willaert)
Amiens is a large city in the North of France, and connects several key trade routes in the area. As it expands, the city is aiming to become a greener, more sustainable city that offers ease of transport and a welcoming atmosphere.
Beyond sustainability
With a team of growers, landscapers and architects, the city’s main transport web was ‘greenified’ with the supply of biodegradable Jiffy Pots. The sustainability factor of the pots was an important selling point, as the city wanted this project to fit in with their environmental policy. It turned out, that with the right partners and collaborations, the Pot offers multiple benefits that reach far beyond sustainability…
We meet David Borderaux (France Environment) at ‘Nursery des Landas’, one of the nurseries in the area. He explains: ‘’Organic pots have two characteristics. The first is that they are biodegradable, which was a big deciding factor for our client. The second important characteristic of using organic pots in plantation is the output rate; the number of pots planted per day is considerably higher.’’
And, from a grower’s perspective, Vincent Rosier, the grower at ‘Nursery des Landas’ adds to it:
‘’We used Jiffy pots for propagation because of better rooting after repotting. The pots allow the plant to take advantage of the entire pot. It also improves recovery of the root after planting compared to the more classic potting methods.’’
A plastic-free future
We visit Armand Delplanque from Terspective Landscaping. His company planted 25.000 plants on the Amiens transitway. He has become quite familiar with the iconic brown pots: ‘’In my opinion, these products will fully meet future standards when single use plastic products will be banned. They encourage incredible rooting because there is no clustering effect; the roots pass through the walls of the pot. They are products of the future.’’
Productivity
IDVerde, another landscaping partner, highlighted the fact that these pots are used in companies where high standards in sustainability are important. Baptiste Hag explains: ‘‘We chose Jiffy pots as they fall in line with our environmental approach, an important issue at IDVerde. The pots increased our productivity and resulted in a higher return in labour estimated at 25%.’’
A win for everyone
Michel Miribel (Jiffy Group) sums up the reasons all partners chose Jiffy pots with confidence to accomplish a demanding task. Firstly, for their economic benefit: they save time during planting as there’s no pot to remove and dispose of plastic. A time saving for the planter between 25% and 30%. Secondly we promote them for their environmental benefit, whereby we’re using natural fibres in producing the pot. And thirdly, the agronomic benefit, which sees the roots grow through the walls of the pot. The walls are porous, the roots are surrounded by air; those outside the pot are burned off by the air, while inside, new roots are formed. And these roots spread throughout, absorb nutrients, and thus we’re guaranteed a good quality plant.
With a team of innovative partners -who also believe sustainability can be economically attractive- a fitting solution was found and implemented in Amiens, making the city indeed a better place.