To Americans, “cosmetic” is not the word that springs to mind when you hear “pesticide.” In
Canada, it’s commonly used to describe pesticides applied to make plants and lawns look better (like weed-and-feed). And it’s a word that sparks heated debate.
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
is editor, Garden Center Magazine, and contributor to the Open Register and Project: Green Industry blogs.
About 15 years ago, the
Quebec town of
Hudson passed a law banning the use and sale of cosmetic pesticides. Lawn-care companies like TruGreen ChemLawn and Spraytechwere hit hard and fought back through the courts. After losing in local courts, the companies pursued appeals until the Supreme Court ruled in June 2001 that the law was valid.
In the past five years, dozens of Canadian towns and cities, including
Toronto and
Halifax, have passed bans on cosmetic pesticide use, with many other towns considering a ban. The laws are as varied as the towns from which they spring. Those in
Quebec tend to be more stringent, banning not only cosmetic use, but also sales.
“[
Quebec] is the only province where retail sale of these products has been regulated,” said Ken Pavely, IPM specialist with trade association Landscape
Ontario. “There are also, by last count, over a hundred municipalities that have created their own bans.”
How are garden centers affected?
“We hear conflicting stories about how the bans are affecting garden centers,” Pavely said. “One report will say that in Halifax, Nova Scotia, retail sales of these products have dropped significantly -- by 80 percent. But we have a major retailer whose sales in these products have gone up.”
Pavely also mentioned media reports about Quebec gardeners driving to Ontario and buying large quantities of pesticides and taking them back home.
Karl Stensson, senior vice president of Sheridan Nurseries, a chain of garden centers in the
Toronto area, said his stores are far enough from the
Quebec border that he hasn’t seen this kind of run on pesticides. But another quirk to the laws has been a challenge.
“There have been some strange rulings. [Here in Toronto] retailers are allowed to sell products, but customers are banned from using them. So retailers cannot tell them how to use it,” Stensson said.
One of the biggest impacts has been how pest-control products are presented. “[The ban] is affecting how we display pesticides. I guess what I’m saying is that we’re showing the face of organics. Our shelves are over 70 percent organic, but our guests purchase 70 percent non-organic,” Stensson said.
Stensson and his team began tackling the issue long before the ban went into effect in
Toronto. After seeing something similar on a visit to
Europe seven years prior, Stensson set up a Garden Pharmacy, where stronger chemicals were behind the counter. Customers ring for service and get one-on-one counseling on how to use pesticides.
“We tell them how to apply it. We tell them things like, ‘twice the application will not kill twice the number of bugs,’” Stensson said.
Coming to
America?
The Canadian anti-pesticide laws are similar to those in the
United States banning smoking in public spaces in how varied they are and the way they are linked with cities rather than state or federal government.
Like smoking bans, the most likely arena where the pesticide laws are enforced are city controlled, such as city parks, municipal landscaping and schools.
In other words, the precedent of passing laws for the common good is already in place. Also, the public has a growing discomfort with pesticides. At this point, however, it has not turned into a true movement like the smoking bans and lawsuits that swept the
United States throughout the 1990s.
“If this comes into the
U.S., it will have a bigger impact,” Stensson said. “You run the risk of losing more. I think it’s inevitable.”
Mixed reactions to ban
Those supporting the Canadian bans are “a growing number of people,” Stensson said. “In the past, it has been a small faction.
“The industry has been opposed to [the bans] all the way along. I think that, taking profit out of the way, a lot of the businesses are looking and saying, if you take away pesticides and herbicides, you can have blights on the landscape. We all know -- and I’ll probably get angry letters for saying this -- that most organic solutions do not work in severe cases.”
Despite his dislike of the bans, Stensson said he had seen results.
“On the other side of the coin, now that bans have come about, some of the [pesticide vendors] are trying to develop organics more than they were before.”
As for public opinion, Stensson said that what people say and what actions they take don’t match.
“The one thing that I find is how fickle the consumer is. They will say in surveys that they want organics and will buy them, but find organic products cost quite a bit more and opt for the cheaper non-organics. If you ask the public, 50 percent might say they believe in organics. But in fact they don’t buy nearly that much,” Stensson said.
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
