Edinburgh expand Mechanical Weeding to phase out glyphosate

Over the last several years Edinburgh Council has continued to expand their mechanical weeding programme and from April 2024 they will be managing their green spaces without spraying. 

They hope to phase out use of the chemical on all council owned assets, including schools by 2026.

This in not just a wish upon a star. The council has put in a lot of work and investment over the last few years increasing their sweeping regimes, and will even change the department responsible for managing the weeds.

"The management of weeds on the city’s streets will become the responsibility of the Street Care Service (formally Street Cleansing) from 2024 and plans to integrate this responsibility into existing and new plans for street cleaning is underway. As part of the planned changes, the service will move to a more proactive, scheduled clean and the frequency of this will be led by data from historical LEAMS results, COPLAR zoning, type of waste collection provided and the Scottish Indices of Multiple Deprivation." 

They will maintain their roads to a grade A standard according to the Code of practice on Litter and Refuse, which means they will ensure the roads are free of detritus. 

Managing the hard surfaces in this fashion means that there is little or no nutrients on a hard surface in which weeds can grow, so the weed burden is significantly reduced. 

Any remaining weeds can then be easily treated with far fewer resources. This will also have many positive benefits such as increased road safety, pedestrian access, reduced road noise, air quality, water quality and a variety of other things. 

The Council has also engaged with the community over the last few years, committing to trials and allowing streets to remove themselves from the spraying schedule.

Picture credit; Pesticide Free Balerno

Alongside the proposed proactive regime, the service will continue to maintain reactive capacity to deal with specific complaints about street weeds where deemed necessary. They are still developing this aspect of their solution, looking at various alternatives. They hope to have made this aspect robust enough to completely eleiminate the use of glyphosate by the end of 2026.

This staged aproach to phasing out weeds in Edinburgh is very positive and heading in a direction that is possible to sustain long term. A recent visit to Edinburgh was very encouraging, seeing the standard many of the streets and parks are already being managed to. This is only set to improve as they further invest in this system.

I want to commend Edinburgh Council for their success so far.

A link to the latest update on their progress can be found here;

https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/documents/s61001/Item%207.4%20-%20Phased%20Reduction%20in%20Glyphosate%20Use.pdf

You can also read their very interesting sub-policy on weed management in full here (on page 45/46)

If you would like to phase out glyphosate, with a similar approach, read our latest guide to creating an Integrated Weed Management Plan