#pesticides

The average lawn is an interesting beast: people plant it, then douse it with artificial fertilizers and dangerous pesticides to make it grow and to keep it uniform-all so that they can hack and mow what they encouraged to grow. And woe to the small yellow flower that rears its head! ↗

— Michael Braungart

#landscaping #lawns #pesticides #environmentalism

Swallows have disappeared, bees are dying out because of pesticides that should have been banned long ago - it's a scandal. ↗

— Brigitte Bardot

#banned #because #been #bees #disappeared

Our generation has taken to the cosmetic use of pesticides and I think, perhaps unwittingly, not fully understanding the dangers it represents to ourselves and, most importantly, to our children. ↗

— Dalton McGuinty

#cosmetic #dangers #fully #generation #i

When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer, it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know, who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides? ↗

— Jerry Brown

#am #buying #coming #consumer #contact

The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place. ↗

— David R. Brower

#chemicals #farming #fertilizer #first #fuel

Organic foods are richer in nutrients. This means they improve satiety and naturally help regulate body weight…Plants produce antioxidants to protect themselves from pests like insects and to withstand harsh weather. When they’re treated with chemicals such as pesticides, they don’t need to produce as much of their own natural defenses, so the levels are lower.” (p.203) ↗

— Cynthia Sass

#body-weight #chemicals #insects #natural-defenses #nutrients

An apple a day might have kept the doctor away prior to the industrialization of food growing and preparation. But, according to research compiled by the United States Drug Administration (USDA) today’s apple contains residue of eleven different neurotoxins—azinphos, methyl chloripyrifos, diazinon, dimethoate, ethion, omthoate, parathion, parathion methyl, phosalone, and phosmet — and the USDA was testing for only one category of chemicals known as organophosphate insecticides. That doesn’t sound too appetizing does it? The average apple is sprayed with pesticides seventeen times before it is harvested. ↗

— Michelle Schoffro Cook

#pesticides #pollution #food

She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: "And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects! ↗

— John Brunner

#pesticides #pollution #change

Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water. ↗

— Thomas Friedman

#downside #environment #fertilizer #golf #great

Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#coffee #competitors #countries #developing #effort