This lack of legislation is despite 95% of consultation-respondents expressing support for the ban.

Commercial peat extraction takes place on lowland raised mire. This is an amazing habitat that should be thrumming with life on peat possibly 9 metres (or more!) deep. In summer you could expect to see the white heads of cottongrass bobbing in the breeze; dragonflies circling their breeding pools on rattling, diamond wings; short-eared owls quartering the ground on stiff, rowing wingbeats, listening for prey with their sharp ears. Delve down amongst the cottongrass and you'll find the habitat engineer, Sphagnum mosses, and perhaps the carnivorous sundew. Up close and personal, you'll find a forest in miniature, a mosaic of microhabitats varying with the terrain and the depth of the water table. This has formed over the last 6,000 years and we've been using it in horticulture in the 1930s.

Peat compost is not some centuries-old tradition - it barely goes back 100 years. In the 1930s, John Innes compost contained 25% peat. Peat's properties made it a difficult thing to transport on its own; by the 1970s, with improvements in plastic packaging, all-peat mixes came to dominate the market place. 

In order to achieve bog-to-bag, lowland raised mire is drained, to drop the water table and kill off surface vegetation, and then gradually milled away until the last of the peat is gone. These amazing, beautiful habitats, nature's cathedrals, are reduced to rubble.

The industry will tell you that it is making progress and, indeed, it is cutting back but it's still getting through 760,000 cubic metres of peat per year. That's more than 300 Olympic swimming pools. And the industry was meant to have been 90% peat-free by 2010.

What can you do? Our colleagues over in the Peat Free Partnership have a petition to demand legislative action on horticultural peat and resources for you to write to your MP requesting the same. Please sign the petition and let your elected representative know that this issue is important to the people that put them in office.

Vote with your wallet.  Bagged peat compost accounts for  around 70% of peat-use in the UK. There are many producers out there that have seized the initiative and taken an evolutionary step forward with growing media, mammals to the peat-compost dinosaurs. The more support we give them, the sooner the dinosaurs become fossils. B&Q, Co-op, Iceland, Lidl, Morrisons, Tesco and Waitrose all sell only peat-free compost - if they can do it, what's stopping the rest of the marketplace? Please go peat-free. 

Join The Wildlife Trusts' peat inspectors - please help us to keep up to date on which retailers are joining the peat free movement.