Privacy Policy

When we talk about ’us’, ’our’ or ’we’, it means ourpermaculturelife.com, permacultureeducationinstitute.org and seedinternational.com. The words ’you’ or ’your’ means you, the visitor to our website(s).

BY USING, REGISTERING TO OR OTHERWISE ACCESSING ANY SERVICES, YOU AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND GIVE AN EXPLICIT AND INFORMED CONSENT TO THE COLLECTION, USE AND PROCESSING OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY, PLEASE DO NOT VISIT, USE, REGISTER TO OR OTHERWISE ACCESS ANY SERVICES.

General Terms

​We are committed to protecting your personal information when you are using our services. We want our services to be safe and enjoyable environments for our users. This Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information we collect from you via the following online services:

• Any of our websites that links to this Privacy Policy
• social media or our official content on other websites

It also relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us by phone, SMS, email, in letters and other correspondence, and in person.

In order to provide you with the full range of our services, we sometimes need to collect information about you.

​Whenever you provide personal information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Data Protection Act 1998 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the “data protection laws”).

No website can be completely secure. If you have any concerns that your account with us could have been compromised, i.e. someone could have discovered your password, please get in touch straight away.

​Our websites may contain hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, and are also likely to use cookies, and we therefore urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit when visiting these websites, which may also be collected by cookies. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.​

Web browser cookies

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer, tablet or mobile phone (all referred to here as a “device”) web browser from a website’s computer and is stored on your device’s hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your web browser, if your browser’s preferences allow it.

Many websites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows. Similar technologies are also often used within emails to understand whether the email has been read or if any links have been clicked.
​You can change your cookie setting at any time. If you continue without changing your settings, we’ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on our websites.

It is important to note that if you change your settings and block certain cookies, this means that certain features which you have chosen cannot be provided, and you will not be able to take full advantage of some of the websites’ features. Should you prefer to disable cookies on our website(s) and on others, the most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser. We suggest consulting the Help section of your browser or taking a look at the ‘About Cookies‘ website, which offers guidance for all modern browsers.

​During the course of any visit to our websites, the pages you see, and perhaps a cookie, are downloaded to your device. Many websites do this because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things, like finding out whether the device (and probably its user) has visited the website before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

​Please note that during your visits to our websites, you may notice some cookies that are not related to us. We sometimes embed content from social media and other third party websites. These may include YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest and Flickr. As a result, when you visit a page containing such content, you may be presented with cookies from these websites, and these third party cookies may track your use of our websites. We do not control the dissemination of these cookies and you should check the relevant third party’s website for more information.

​Where we embed content from social media and other third party websites, some websites may use Google Analytics to collect data about user behaviour for their own purposes. We also use Google Analytics. For more information, see Google Analytics’s site ‘How Google Uses Data‘.
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Do Not Track (DNT) browser setting

DNT is a feature offered by some browsers which, when enabled, sends a signal to websites to request that your browsing is not tracked, such as by third party ad networks, social networks and analytic companies. Our websites may not respond to DNT requests.

Storage overseas

We may change the host of our websites from time to time in accordance with our business requirements. This may mean that the information collected through our websites is hosted overseas. We do our best to use reputable companies that have appropriate information protection to host our websites.

What information do you collect about me?​

When you participate in, access, or sign up to any of our services, activities, or online content, such as newsletters, competitions, live chats, message boards, web and mobile notifications, telephone or text us, we may receive personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number, as well as information collected about your use of our services.

​We also use cookies and technologies that may collect IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet) and other information about devices from visitors to our websites, such as type of device used, operating system version, browser type, demographic information, referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g. HTML pages, graphics, etc.), and/or date/time stamp data to analyse trends in the aggregate and administer the site.

Please note that sometimes we will require you to provide additional personal information, and sometimes sensitive personal information. When we do this, we will provide further information about why we are collecting your information and how we will use it.
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How will you use the information you collect about me?

​We will use your personal information for a few purposes:​

• to provide our services, activities or online content, to provide you with information about them, and to deal with your requests and enquiries;
• for “service administration purposes”, which means that we may contact you for reasons related to the service, activity or online content you have signed up for, i.e. to notify you that a particular service, activity or online content has been suspended for maintenance, to notify you of updates to our Privacy Policy or Terms and Conditions, to let you know if your account with us has become dormant, and to ask if you would like to use it again before we close it;
• where we provide personalised services, we may need to analyse the information you supply, as well as your activity on our services, so that we can offer you a better personalisation service. If you are signed-in or subscribed to email newsletters, you will receive a personalised service. If you do not wish to continue to receive these services, then you can unsubscribe from the newsletters;
• to contact you about a submission you have made, including any content you provide;
• to use IP addresses and device identifiers to identify the location of users, to block disruptive use, and to establish the number of visits from different countries;
• for analysis and research purposes so that we may improve the services offered by us;
• to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience;
• when you access our websites, it may feature advertising. A certain amount of this advertising is tailored to the individual, a common practice known as online behavioural advertising.

​Where we propose using your personal information for any other uses, we will ensure that we notify you first.​

When may you contact me?

​We may contact you:

• in relation to any service, activity or online content you have signed up for, in order to ensure that we can deliver the services to you, i.e. to verify your email when you sign up for an account with us, or to help you reset your password, or to check if you still want to use the service (if your account is dormant);
• in relation to any correspondence we receive from you or any comment or complaint you make about our products or services;
• in relation to any personalised services you are using;
• in relation to any contribution you have submitted to us, i.e. on our message boards or via text or voicemail message;
• to invite you to participate in surveys about our services (participation is always voluntary),
  for marketing purposes, where you have agreed to this.

We will never contact you to ask for your account password, or other login information. Please be cautious if you receive any emails, or calls, from people asking for this information and claiming to be from us.

Will I be contacted for marketing purposes?

We will only send you emails, or otherwise contact you for marketing purposes, or to promote new services, activities or content, where you have agreed to this.

Will you share my personal information with anyone else?

We will keep your information within our organisation, except where disclosure is required by law (i.e. to government bodies and law enforcement agencies, including for child protection reasons), or as described in this section.

Generally, we will use your information within our organisation, and will only share it outside our organisation, where you have requested it, or given your consent, for example, if you choose to share content via social media.

However, sometimes we use third parties to process your information on our behalf, for example, to provide services or analysis. We require these third parties to comply strictly with these instructions and that they do not use your personal information for their own business purposes.
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If you post or send offensive, inappropriate, or objectionable content anywhere on or to our websites, or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any of our services, we may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.
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What if I am a user aged under 18?

​If you are aged 18 or under, please get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide any personal information to us.

How long will you keep my information?

​We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us. If you delete your account with us, then your personal information is deleted immediately, and the remaining information is anonymised for analytical purposes.

​If you have not used your account with us in the last two years, then your account may be classed as dormant, or may even have been deleted in line with our privacy policy. We will email to remind you before deletion, so please check your inbox regularly to see if we have sent you any emails about this.​

Can I delete my data?

​You can always delete your account with us. Deleting your account will erase any personal information in your account that we have about you, and it will mean any data we hold about how you have used our services will be made anonymous.
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Can I find out what personal information you hold about me?

​Under the data protection laws, you have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. We may require you to prove your identity with 2 pieces of approved identification. We will use reasonable efforts consistent with our legal duty to supply, correct, or delete, personal information about you on our files.​

We will need two copies of forms of identification, which can be:

• Passport
• Driving licence
• Birth certificate
• Current vehicle registration document
• Bank statement (from last 3 months)

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Changes to our Privacy Policy

​This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time, so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to us. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not continue to use our websites to submit personal information to us.