Green shoots of success in Shetland

The Polycrub was never designed to become a global business. These semi-cylindrical greenhouses, made with robust polycarbonate materials and piping recycled from the aquaculture industry, were originally designed solely for the community in Northmavine, on the northern edge of the Shetland Mainland. In 2008, the Northmavine Community Development Company (NCDC) wanted to reduce its food miles, so used grant aid from the Scottish Climate Challenge Fund to build 12 greenhouses for the community – coming up with an innovative new design that could withstand 120mph winds and could store far more heat than conventional greenhouses.

“That was supposed to be that,” says Maree Hay, who was part of the project’s original team, and is now Polycrub’s Managing Director. “But we found that folk got really excited when they saw them. We were very quickly getting enquiries from across Shetland, and even from folk who were coming to Shetland on holiday and wanted one down south.”

Soon, with a new brand name and trademark, Polycrub became a business – albeit one with a difference. The profits go straight back to the community, helping to fund other local projects like the Bruckland SCRAN recycling centre. The business has gone well, with Polycrubs visible across Shetland. There are now hundreds of tunnels across the Highlands and Islands, as well as as far afield as the Falkland Islands and Burgundy, France.

Polycrub has even performed well during lockdown, returning more than £75,000 to Northmavine in the last financial year. It has ambitious plans to grow further, hoping to ship building materials to hubs as far afield as Wales and Northern Ireland. “There’s an emotional connection to these things somehow, and the demand is there,” says Maree. “It’s about getting the materials closer to potential customers, and doing that in as sustainable way as possible too.”

As Maree points out, Shetland has always been a sustainably-minded place, where reusing and reusing and recycling has often been an essential part of living. “We maybe lost a bit of that for a while, but it’s definitely coming back,” she says.

Polycrub isn’t the only Shetland business that’s doing its bit to reduce food miles – and doing good business in the process. At the start of lockdown last year, farmer Kevin Obern started packing vegetable boxes from his J K Mainland Farm in Quendale, in the South Mainland. He was already selling potatoes and vegetables to local supermarkets like Tesco and the Coop, but was constantly having to lower his prices to compete with cheap, mass-produced vegetables from the UK Mainland and abroad. With Covid restrictions limiting many Shetlanders ability to shop, Kevin saw a chance to provide them with fresh vegetables straight to their door, initially delivering £15 boxes.

“It was just an experiment at the start,” says Kevin. “But it really started taking off. People loved knowing that their vegetables were less than a day out of the ground, and that we could tell them exactly how they were grown, and in which field. When you think about it, it’s madness that we have this beautiful fresh produce on our doorstep but buy the same products that come from thousands of miles away.”

Kevin now sells more than 60 boxes every fortnight, travelling across the Shetland Mainland to make deliveries. But he plans to grow this part of his business even more after Covid restrictions end, increasing sales to other islands (over Christmas, he sold a van’s worth of vegetables on Whalsay), and adding ever-more varieties to his box, from beetroot to shallots, brussel sprouts, pointed cabbage and Romanesco broccoli. “From what people are saying to us, we don’t think this is just a lockdown thing,” says Kevin. “We’ve got really big plans for the rest of this year.”

Reducing food miles isn’t the only way that Shetland is upping its sustainability game, with many businesses looking at ways to be kinder to the environment. For example, Stuart Balfour is a Northmavine fisherman whose company Sail Line Fish company is aiming to develop a zero-emissions, sailing-based fishing operation, and has developed the Balpha Mast for flexible sailing-fishing. Lerwick shop Why Waste?, founded by Shetlanders Natasha Maltby and Becky Robertson, sells eco-friendly and zero-waste products, from stainless steel straws to bamboo toothbrushes and refillable bath products, detergents and more.

While plans for large-scale wind farms and green hydrogen production have been getting the headlines of late, other businesses and local community groups have been coming up with green energy solutions. In Cullivoe, on the North Isle of Yell, the community-owned Garth Wind Farm has been generating profits for the community since it was installed in 2017, and has helped the local North Yell Development Council to hire a paid project manager to develop the local marina.

Meanwhile, local company Nordri has been supplying and installing wind turbines and solar panels since 2012, as well as doing general electrical and engineering work for Shetland businesses and organisations. When Brian Halcrow started the business, 90 per cent of Nordri’s work was in renewables, often for individuals and families that wanted to reduce energy bills and earn money from feeding energy into the grid, all while using green energy. That decreased significantly when the UK government removed feed-in tariff subsidies for onshore wind and solar panels, but Brian sees demand returning.

A key reason is the plan for a subsea cable linking the Shetland grid to the Scottish Mainland in the next few years. “It’ll mean we can apply for unconstrained systems, and people will be able to sell more energy back to the grid, or store it for themselves using batteries,” says Brian, who sees major upsides in the growth of renewable energy and green hydrogen creation in Shetland. “It’ll make it much more financially viable for people to install a wind turbine or solar panels.”

Improving technology means that solar panels can now produce roughly twice as much power as they could even five years ago, and Brian also sees UK-wide government policy shifting back towards renewable self-generation. “In a way, we’ve just been scratching the surface of what’s possible,” he says. “We see a future of renewable energy, hydrogen fuel and different consumer behaviour. We need to adapt and be ready for that.”

While Shetland’s plans to be a “green island” are often presented on an island-wide scale, the real progress might be on an individual and community level. Of people growing and buying locally, recycling even more, creating and storing their own energy, and driving hybrid or electric vehicles. As Covid restrictions ease, that greener future seems more possible than ever.