Next time you see the television news and a reporter is talking in front of the Houses of Parliament, count the number of cyclists that pass by in the background – my record is 22 and I look forward to seeing more in the future. Quite promising, really, for a 20-second snippet.

In a similar way, I keep my eye on what is happening in garden centres, and was frustrated recently to see that some were still selling large bags of compost that were made from peat, or contained a proportion of peat, and the same is true of local supermarkets.

This really is absolutely unacceptable environmentally, and refusing to buy peat-based products is one of the easiest ways of reducing the amount of CO2 we are each responsible for, and it can also be our contribution to reducing river flooding.

Peat occurs naturally on moorlands and in lowland wetlands when the high water table prevents dead vegetation from decaying so that it slowly builds up as a fibrous sponge that holds water very effectively. It’s the beginning of the process that would result in coal, millions of years later, and so it can be considered a fossil fuel. Indeed, when dried and burned, it produces more CO2 than coal and twice as much as gas.

It follows that it shouldn’t be used as a fuel, and while there is now less domestic peat-burning in the Scottish isles and Ireland, it is still cut on a commercial scale for electricity production in power stations in Ireland, Russia and Finland. Indeed, in the latter country it produces more CO2 than all the cars and lorries.

Elsewhere, peat is drained for farming, with disastrous consequences, as it burns very easily when dry, and while locally this has happened on Ilkley Moor and around Haworth, the Indonesian fires that began in 1997 burned for ten years. Last summer’s devastating fires in the Russian forests were also kept going by the dried-out peat. On this scale the fires produce more CO2 than all the rest of the world’s plant growth absorbs in a year.

A more local reason for keeping the peat wet and where it grows – on the moorland and hill tops – is the way that it reduces flooding. As a large sponge, it holds millions of litres of water and lets it dribble out slowly. When the moors are drained and dry out, the water pours down the valleys and into our houses, which is why Yorkshire Water are blocking up the drainage channels to keep the moors wet.

The only place for peat is on the moors and not in bags of compost or our gardens.