The company behind a plant-based alternative to goose down is leading a consortium to restore damaged peatlands in England, a government backed initiative that is expected to be the world’s largest bulrush wetland farming demonstration.
Led by Ponda, the consortium has secured 2.76 million euros ($3.1 million) in public funding for the 30-month project to establish a 30-hectare demonstration site for growing bulrush, according to a report from EU-Startups.com.
Other members of the consortium are J&K Barnard Farms, Liverpool John Moores University, Lancashire Wildlife Trust, Finance Earth and Berghaus. The grant was awarded by the Farming Innovation Programme under the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
“This is a culmination of everything we’ve been working towards at Ponda,” said Julian Ellis-Brown, co-founder and CEO of Ponda in a LinkedIn post about the grant. He called the project the “world’s largest bulrush wetland-farm demonstrator.”
“Built here in England, this will be regenerating 75 acres of damaged peatlands back into carbon-storing, nature-uplifting, productive land,” he said.
This project plays well into Ponda’s strengths. The U.K. based startup has developed BioPuff, a cruelty-free and plant-based biomaterial that is essentially made from plants called bulrush, which are grown in regenerated wetlands. Late last year, the company closed its $2.4 million seed funding round, securing capital which will be used to commercialize Biopuff.
Wetlands are remarkable for several reasons, but perhaps the most environmentally relevant of which is their incredible ability to store carbon. Wetlands only cover 1 percent of the Earth’s surface, but they store 20 percent of the global organic ecosystem carbon because of their high carbon sequestration rates, which exceed oceanic and forest ecosystems, according to a 2022 study in the academic journal Science.
However, 87 percent of the world’s wetlands have been lost over the last three centuries to unsustainable development, pollution (wherein 80 percent of global wastewater is released into wetlands untreated), and climate change, said Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, U.K.’s leading wetland conversation charity.
