Pesticide Activism

Every day, it seems, we are learning more about the toxic effects of some of the country's most popular pesticides. But people still buy them, and they do not really understand how harmful they are. Folks on this permies orum know better, and are learning new ways to reach our beautiful vision of a world full of food for us and the creatures we share this planet with. You are my tribe. I need your help to reach out to people who are still using pesticides and chemical fertilizers. My husband and I are taking on an educational effort to let people know how truly dangerous are the toxic pesticides for sale in most of the garden centers and hardware stores around here. Our effort includes Point Of Sale cards where the insecticides, herbicides, disease control products, non-insect pest control products, moss control, and fertilizers are carefully evaluated as to toxicity, and then placed into one of 5 clearly marked categories. It makes it easy for people to choose the least harmful methods to solve a problem in their lawn or garden. A sample of the Weed Control card for this year (draft) is attached. We also include mechanical methods which involve no chemicals at all, like hand picking slugs, or mulching for weed control.

We have begun a crowdfunding effort for the project. Here is the link: www.startsomegood.com/GardenGreen In addition to the Point of Sale cards, we hope to raise funds for sales staff training at the retail outlets, articles in the local papers, education to the public on nontoxic alternatives, radio appearances, and more. We will measure our effectiveness at year end when the retailers give us sales data so we can compare % of sales of green vs toxic products from prior years. Yes, we have gotten this kind of support in the past from the retailers! They would love to see their customers request less toxic alternatives, because they live here too.

Thank you for any support you can offer. Diane
Here is a short 4 minute video describing the effort:[youtube][youtube]https://youtu.be/b7I_GKgNaUE [/youtube]f[/youtube]

I've embedded the video below. Also, here's a live link to the crowdfunding page - http://startsomegood.com/GardenGreen