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Click & Grow: Our Highlights of 2020
It’s unlikely that anyone who lived through 2020 will be forgetting it anytime soon. We’ve witnessed a rollercoaster of world events, many of which will shape the future for years to come.
Despite all that’s happened, we believe there’s so much to be grateful for. So much to celebrate. For all of us here at Click & Grow, it’s been inspiring to see more and more people seek a closer connection to nature. Amidst the difficulty of social isolation, the simple pleasures of indoor gardening have become a tonic for all of us. We’re thrilled to have seen our Facebook Click & Growers Community grow by 105% in 2020.
Image: @marijaanus
As we welcome more indoor gardeners to the Click & Grow family, we hope to bridge the gap between humankind and nature even further. A big part of bridging this gap means living sustainably. Environmental responsibility is at the heart of all we do and we believe indoor gardening has a big part to play in creating a greener future. Here are some of our highlights from 2020 that fill us with optimism.
Reducing food waste and climate impact
It’s estimated that one third of all food produced around the world is wasted. Approximately 45% of fruits and vegetables go to waste and up to 62% of leafy greens. Growing with Click & Grow is an easy way to fight food waste. Smart gardens make it possible to harvest fresh food right before consuming, ensuring nothing goes to waste. By growing food in their smart gardens, Click & Growers avoided wasting 258.74 tonnes of food in 2020. That’s the equivalent of 2.94 million average-sized oranges. If that amount of food were to be wasted, it would result in 656.8 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Promoting fresher, healthier food
In addition to helping you reduce food waste, smart gardens enable you to get more vitamins out of each plant without sacrificing nutrients. You can harvest plants from your smart garden at the exact time when they are ready and then add them straight to your dinner plate. The total value of nutrients saved and gained with Click & Grow is enough to satisfy the yearly vitamin need for 13,000 people. It’s encouraging to know that more than 5 million plants were grown with Click & Grow in 2020 alone. Click & Grow plants never contain any pesticides or other harmful chemicals. This contributes to a cleaner environment and healthier lifestyles. Growing at least some of your own food at home is especially significant when we consider the state of commercially processed foods. Such foods are rarely fresh and suffer from reduced vitamin content as well as an altered balance of minerals. In particular, the canning and freezing of fruits and vegetables has a harmful effect on their nutrient content.
Saving water
Growing with Click & Grow consumes 95% less water than traditional agriculture. This has resulted in 3,766,394 litres of water being saved in 2020. To put this into perspective, that’s the size of 1.5 olympic size swimming pools or 61,000 showers that last 8 minutes long. When growing plants in your smart garden, you are actively helping to save water. Why is this important? We all need water to survive. Saving water not only benefits future generations but also our ecosystem and wildlife. When we reduce our water usage, we reduce the energy required to process and deliver it to homes, farms, businesses and communities. As a result, this helps to reduce pollution and conserve fuel resources.
Reducing transportation
Around the planet, food chains are becoming unnecessarily long. In many cases, the produce you find on supermarket shelves has travelled hundreds of miles. Longer journeys mean more nutrient loss, more freight on roads, seas and in the skies generating more pollution. Thanks to people growing food at home in their Click & Grow smart gardens, 19.2 tonnes of transport CO2 emissions were avoided in 2020. That’s the equivalent of 22 plane journeys from London to New York. Furthermore, when Click & Grow produce is shipped to various parts of the world, it isn’t travelling with its full weight. The only weight it carries is the dry plant pod and its light packaging.
Promoting mental well-being
Plants have a way of soothing our senses. Not only do they improve our productivity, they also help reduce stress levels. In 2020, 78 million minutes of calmness and connection with nature were created from interacting with smart gardens. Particularly during lockdown periods, members of our community have found solace in growing their favourite plants at home. Smart gardens have also proved to be a valuable resource for keeping kids entertained when school is out. In addition to this, smart gardens have helped to spruce up home offices and add some much needed greenery to living spaces during self-isolation.
Popularity took us into space
We’re always thrilled when we see the message of Click & Grow featured in the media. 2020 saw us receive 235% more mentions in the media compared to 2019.
We also made our first appearance in space, thanks to George Clooney who used our smart gardens in his sci-fi drama ‘The Midnight Sky’. In the film, a group of astronauts, led by Felicity Jones, are travelling towards Saturn’s satellite K23, deemed as the last hope of humankind, and grow their fresh greens on board with Click & Grow.
As many of us found our inner-gardeners in 2020, so did the quarantining family of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. Led by the most avid gardener, daughter Rumer, their family managed to grow 66 Click & Grow plants while keeping away from the virus.
We also made an appearance on The Tonight Show - it took Jimmy Fallon just 57 seconds to learn how to use the Smart Garden 9!
To learn more about what we stand for, visit us at www.clickandgrow.com. Discover how our self-growing gardens make it possible to eat sustainably by growing tasty, vitamin-rich food at home. No additives, no food miles, no pollution, just wholesome food straight from your garden to your plate.