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Introduction Global efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions include reductions in the use of coal, gas, oil, and fossil peat. In reaction to parliament-requested action related to peat use, the Dutch Covenant “Agreement on environmental impact of potting soil and substrates” was initiated. To support the Covenant parties, a project was started in 2023. The first goal was a quantitative list of renewable raw materials for growing media with a horizon up to 2050. Methods An extensive list of possible growing media constituents was reduced to a short list based on price, minimum quantities, competition from other industries, and various levels of risks. This short list was arranged into groups. An analysis was then made of the main drawbacks and the required technical ameliorations. Results The results showed market-accepted materials such as coir, coniferous wood fiber, coniferous bark, compost, and perlite. Less familiar but promising materials included acrotelm, other types of wood and bark fiber, biochars, non-wood plant fiber, co-composts, and reused growing media. Discussion Technical ameliorations required for market acceptance of new raw materials need efforts of the industry, knowledge institutes, and the government. Therefore, a joint Roadmap for research steps up to 2050 was made. The focus is on combinations of more advanced processing; sanitization of materials; and stabilization of materials, specifying the base fertilization and the maintenance fertilization. Although this work concentrates on the Dutch situation, the approach is on material availability in Europe, and the results are thought to be of value for tuning global research efforts toward sustainable growing media.
Blok et al. (Tue,) studied this question.