A LEADING commercial nursery based in North Yorkshire has launched its first paperless catalogue.

The Garden Centre sales division of Johnsons of Whixley which has supplied more than 700,000 plants to centres this year would usually have its catalogue printed and posted to customers.

But it has ditched its traditional format for the first time in 50 years to help the environment, using the slogan 'we grow trees, we don't waste them'.

This is one of many green changes to the company, which grows and supplies more than seven million plants and trees per year, uses low emission vehicles and uses rainfall and run-off water from its reservoirs for its irrigation system.

It also now uses a paperless ordering processing system.

Group managing director, Graham Richardson, said: "This was an obvious step for our Garden Centre Sales department.

"In going paperless, we have saved tens of thousands of pages which, by the end of the next year, would have ended up in the bin or recycled and would have taken time to process."