Your plan to phase out the use of pesticides

For most councils, a complete and immediate ban of glyphosate is unrealistic and has often led to regret.

However, it is possible to successfully phase out glyphosate in a relatively short period of time and at relatively little cost.

Here's how;

Communicate with stakeholders and make your intentions clear. 

When starting the process, clear and open communication is key.

Are you using contractors to carry out your weed control? Or is it your own staff? 

Often the weed control contracts are written around treatments with glyphosate - make sure you are writing contracts in a way that can be met by teams using other methods. You could encourage pricing of the job with and without pesticides.

Are the community engaged? 

Often residents can be helpfully engaged in community weeding schemes to reduce some of the burden on Council Operatives and Professional Contractors.

Talk with suppliers of alternatives early in the process. Ask for advice if you are arranging trials - the manufacturers or importers of alternatives often have some useful knowledge and experience.

Reduce the number of glyphosate applications necessary by implementing a weed brushing and sweeping process.

By removing the soil build up on hard surfaces and keeping on top of detritus build up you can significantly reduce the growth of perennials - this in turn immediately reduces the number of applications of glyphosate needed to maintain an area. 

Typically - areas that would require 3-4 applications of glyphosate in a year can be treated to one pass with a weed brush (collecting any arisings with a sweeper) and one glyphosate application per year.

Detritus build up can be significantly reduced by careful consideration of plant choices. Planting slow growing ground cover that doesn't drop lots of seeds and which can be maintained by a yearly trim will lead to far less detritus than wild flowers for example, while still providing great flowers for pollinators.

Weeds are any plant in the wrong place - not only will ground cover greatly reduce weeds on what might otherwise be bare soil or grassy areas, it will also reduce the likely hood of excessive seeds falling in unwanted places such as the soil build up on hard surfaces.

Keeping glyphosate in place for the first year will allow you to fall back on this in any areas where weed brushing and sweeping has not been as effective as you wish.

Some examples of successful implementation of this stage include Edinburgh City Council, and Newport City Council who have both seen large reductions in the number of applications of glyphosate required following the introduction of annual weed brushing on hard surfaces. 

Replace the remaining glyphosate application with a heat based treatment

Now you have reduced any areas of bare soil by planting ground cover and removed as many opportunities for perennial weeds as possible by brushing your hard surfaces to remove soil build up we will be left mainly with young annual weeds to treat. 

These can be killed effectively with heat in one or two applications, so replacing the remaining glyphosate applications becomes a much easier task. 

Heat treatment works best earlier in the year before any plants have had time to become well established and gone to seed. If we can kill weeds before they go to seed we can significantly reduce the chances of fresh growth, so timing is important. 

We think the easiest and most effective heat treatment to scale across a city or town is the Ripagreen Thermal Lance. This can be used with a backpack or trolley set up, making it extremely easy to transport and reducing access difficulties associated with vehicle mounted systems.

The year round regime will now consist of;

1. Weed brushing hard surfaces in the Winter - which will become much less labour intensive when done on an annual basis,
2. Applying an application of heat in the spring to new growth
3. Sweeping surfaces in the Summer and Autumn to remove leaf fall, grass clippings and loose soil.

Implementing the strategy step by step allows each of the processes to work most effectively and will reduce costs by keeping applications and outlay for equipment to a manageable level.

For much more information on weed prevention please take a look at our new Weed Prevention Guide for the Amenity Sector

You should also check out our 4 step plan to phase out glyphosate.

For more information on reducing or eliminating your reliance on chemicals to deal with weeds, please get in touch.