UK Nature and Environment

369 readers

76 users here now

General Instance Rules:

No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
Do not spam or abuse network features.

Community Specific Rules:

Keep posts UK-specific. There are other places on Lemmy to post articles which relate to global environmental issues (e.g. slrpnk.net).
Keep comments in English so that they can be appropriately moderated.

Note: Our temporary logo is from The Wildlife Trusts. We are not officially associated with them.

Our autumn banner is a shot of maple leaves by Hossenfeffer.

founded 11 months ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Sunderland Council to continue using chemical weedkiller (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Chemical weedkiller will continue to be used in a city's parks and on footpaths after an effective alternative could not be found.

Sunderland City Council said it had hoped to stop using glyphosate herbicide over health concerns linking it to cancer.

However, after three years of trying other treatments, it said the chemical was the most "effective and less expensive" solution.

The authority also said it had halved the use of the herbicide on its land in the last three years, from 203 gallons (925 litres) to 106 gallons (480 litres).

A council report found that alternatives were "less effective, more expensive and had a greater detrimental environmental and ecological impact".

top 2 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Just fucking let the weeds grow. They're there for a reason.

reduced resident satisfaction about weeds clogging up paths

Clogging up? Are some dandelions really stopping people from getting down a path? I don't think so. Plants don't tend to grow very well on trodden paths, any that do grow will be on the edges becoming just an aesthetics problem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Chemical weedkiller will continue to be used in a city's parks and on footpaths after an effective alternative could not be found.Sunderland City Council said it had hoped to stop using glyphosate herbicide over health concerns linking it to cancer.However, after three years of trying other treatments, it said the chemical was the most "effective and less expensive" solution.

The authority also said it had halved the use of the herbicide on its land in the last three years, from 203 gallons (925 litres) to 106 gallons (480 litres).

A council report found that alternatives were "less effective, more expensive and had a greater detrimental environmental and ecological impact".It said that this had resulted in "reduced resident satisfaction" about weeds clogging up paths, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.In March 2021 the council said it hoped to scrap the use of the weedkiller, external following concerns from city residents about impacts on human, animal and environmental health.However, following trials of alternatives, a cabinet report concluded that glyphosate was the most effective.The Labour-run cabinet agreed on Thursday that it would continue using the herbicide, which is also used to tackle invasive species such as Japanese knotweed.The authority also pledged to carry on trying to find less toxic alternatives.

Follow BBC Sunderland on X (formerly Twitter), external, Facebook, external and Instagram, external.

Send your story ideas to [email protected]

The original article contains 227 words, the summary contains 227 words. Saved 0%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!