Why is this important? Glyphosate has, according to recent studies, been linked to the death of bees. It weakens their gut bacteria making them susceptible to disease leading to a higher bee mortality rate. A weedkiller containing glyphosate has also been found by a jury in Los Angeles to have been a substantial factor in a man developing cancer. Globally, there are more honey bees than any other pollinating insectors. They are vital to pollinate the plants that produce the food that we eat to survive.
https://www.newsweek.com/bee-death-scientists-warn-common-weed-killer-harming-honey-bees-1137103
This ePetition ran from 13/12/2019 to 16/12/2019 and has now finished.
293 people signed this ePetition.
Currently Glyphosate is the only general weed killer available to us. Without it we would not be able to undertake the Highways weed spraying contract or remove weeds from all of the walk up block paving around our housing estates.
Our policy is to use Glyphosate (and weed killers in general) as little as possible within our green spaces and we are aware of the environmental issues surrounding their use. However, we do not have the resource to manually remove weeds from all of our sites, particularly those with large hard standings such as Highways, precincts etc. and therefore we would very quickly get over ridden by weeds if we had to rely on manual removal alone. Wherever possible we leave weeds to grow naturally, but we often find this meets resistance with local residents.
There are also cases where use of weed killers is our only
option i.e. where we are controlling Japanese Knotweed or where we
are controlling weeds on the city walls or revetments.