A little good news...
September 8, 2009
From a friend who prefers to remain anonymous...
This link is about the Canadian Cosmetic Pesticide Act which...I'm beginning to giggle here....bans the use of glyphosate and others...Round-up and Weed/Feed lawn chemicals in Ontario....lots of giggling....and the soon in the entire country. (I love the word cosmetic in the title! Spotlights a sort of cocky vanity about "weed" control.)
I have to see the pesticide problem from inside the landscaping industry everyday and despair of this sort of legislation ever happening here but...perhaps there's hope.
The poisons have made everybody apathetic and slovenly about the constant use of the evil stuff for plants in driveway cracks, etc. The landscaping company I work for routinely sends out Dr. Death to spray sod prior to installing gardens. I've lost track of the number of times that someone complains about poor seed germination and then answers affirmatively when I ask them if they use Preen/pre-emergent on their garden beds. Sigh.
The boss gets a frowny face when I take a weedwacker to the knee high weeds in the nursery, saying that he'll just get the pesticide guy-Dr. Death-to "knock the weeds down because that's more efficient". He sends out untrained, non english speakers to apply pesticides, Dr Death mixes his poisons and chuckles Oops when he spills them etc etc etc. And these are "professional" level people. I'm quite convinced that Dr. Death is a major Rush Limbaugh fan due to neurochemical damage from pesticide exposure.
And always, I have to be careful what I say at work to the general public. I quote my grandmother...one year's seeds, seven year's seeds, recommend regular weed wacking, heavy mulching, corn gluten pre-emergent and so on. All too much work compared to Round-up .......grrrrrrrr. I may move to Ontario....-
