Planet Friendly Horse Keeping

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How do I reconcile loving the planet and loving my horse?

Riding and keeping horses for me is all about enjoying the great outdoors in partnership with a magnificent animal. For the sake of that magnificent animal, and my continuing enjoyment, I would like the wide open spaces, clean air and our healthy existence on this planet to last as long as possible. For this reason, I have been thinking a lot recently about planet friendly horse keeping.

Much of what we do as horse keepers is surprisingly destructive to the environment. The inexplicable madness of putting our horses in a large, diesel burning truck and driving them 100 miles, or more, up the motorway to then ride them somewhere lovely is an example of a common equestrian practice that seems bonkers to outsiders. A bit like the overtly pious cyclists who put their carbon fibre bikes on the roof of their cars and drive somewhere miles away from home to enjoy fresh air and exercise.

We all find our level of comfort and compromise in life, but here are some simple suggestions of how I have done my best to minimise our environmental impact.

Rethink your choices

What bagged feed do you use? Is it ethically produced? Non GMO, organic, i.e. pesticide free, how many food miles does it travel? Does the feed come in plastic bags or paper? I feed a European bagged feed that is both organic and clean and comes in mostly paper bags but I am still using Copra- that stuff does a lot of miles by diesel burning freight boat to get to the UK.

What bedding do you use? Shredded paper doesn’t seem to rot down at all well in a muck heap, although it does have the apparent benefit of recycling office waste paper through another use. But office paper can go through many life cycles as paper when it is not contaminated with biological waste. Sawdust or wood shavings take longer to rot down compared to straw, in which category I include the new varieties of rape straw bedding and even rape straw pellets. Rubber mats are an investment that saves on bedding consumption but it pays to buy the best; they are really hard to dispose of ethically once worn out and discarded.

Same for arena surfaces; rubber is not particularly bio-degradable, neither is carpet fibre or coated sand. What will your arena look like in 50 years times if the world were to end tomorrow? Will it be a lovely field or a wasteland?

Every little counts, and some of the most tiny things last the longest. Could you sew your horse’s plaits with cotton thread instead of nylon bands? The plaits look much better, with practice it’s just as quick, and you aren’t discarding tiny bits of plastic into landfill. If you do use bands then rubber is more bio-degradable than plastic.

Refuse single use

The most annoying and indestructible plastic consumables we have all collected for years are the little plastic scoops that come with supplements, and also the plastic tubs the powders arrived in. Most reputable companies have provided a solution to this dilemma now and offer bagged refills with scoop free options. I personally have enough scoops and tubs to last me for the next 10 years.

Haylage wrap plastic was another annoying accumulation I could never find a solution to. It is possible to make compostable plastic – maybe we should all insist on its more widespread usage? I have managed to switch my horses back to hay, to my green conscience’s immense relief.

Reduce consumption

Do you need to make that truck journey? Can you buy your feed in bigger amounts to save unnecessary journeys? Can you get your feed and bedding delivered in bulk? Can you and your horse buddy up with a friend to travel to that competition? Cost saving as well as planet saving.

Can your instructor come to you by car, rather than you and the horse doing the truck journey or even better, can they teach you over Skype- an amazing solution for flatwork lessons that we were forced to try out in lockdown.

Do you really need all those sets of matchy matchy?

How many rugs can one horse wear?

How many clothes can you wear? (Jackets don’t count here- one can never have enough warm jackets LOL)

Reuse everything

over and over. Buy quality, love it and look after it, wash your brushes, clean your tack.

Refurbish old stuff

Good quality leather tack lasts for ever. I have one saddle that is definitely older than me and another that must be 25 years old. The side saddle I had on loan was over 100 years old. I have leather spares in my trunk that I have owned since my polo grooming days, oiled and checked once every year or so and still perfectly serviceable.

Vegan tack has become a thing recently- most of this is made from oil derivatives and will never biodegrade. Personally I think a high quality, durable, biodegradable saddle made of natural materials, that happen to be by-products of the human food trade, is a much better bet for the planet than a plastic bridle derived from crude oil that will deteriorate over time but never rot away completely.

My opinion and my chosen compromise has hardened into – Planet first, because all animals need a planet to live on.

Linen, hemp and cotton are obviously plant derived alternatives for bridles at least. Felt saddles are another option; an animal product but still biodegradable and not a product of slaughter. I think we are still a long way away from affordable quality saddles made of mushroom leather.

Nylon rugs should be washed and reproofed as often as you can before they are discarded. And rips tears and broken straps can all be

Repaired before you replace the item?

Resell

I have sold a huge amount of stuff this last two years. All surplus to requirements, all bought in earlier times, when I wasn’t actively trying to minimise my environmental impact. I have always bought quality, and so others have now benefitted from my previous shopping addiction. A good deal, at a fair price, puts good kit back into regular use, and prevents another bit of stuff eventually going into landfill.

Our garage storage boxes are often just a staging post on the way to landfill, if we are truly honest with ourselves.

What is the best Re-purpose trick you have seen ?

I would add to these- Rewild, resurface or replant. Foster the biodiversity in your gardens, fields and corners of wasteland. Rather than putting down tarmac and digging land-drains, can you use natural surfaces like gravel or membraned tracks?Cherish your wetlands; peat and moss and bog are all designed to suck up and hold water, slowing its passage downstream. Plant trees to improve drainage; alder and willow love growing with their feet wet, whilst a mature oak tree consumes upwards of 50 gallons of water a day.

And then finally, when there is no other option left, when we have minimised our impact and our choices have minimised our waste, only then we should do our best to Recycle.