Sainsbury's 'Bee Hotels' To Be Installed At 38 London Stores

businessgreen.com:

The race to be seen as the UK's greenest supermarket took a somewhat bizarre twist last week when Sainsbury's announced that it is to set up a network of " bee hotels" across London to help reverse the decline in the population of solitary bees.

Read the whole story: businessgreen.com

Comments

[fromdnorth]

05:12 AM on 06/24/2010

A new Canadian study suggests natural pesticides could cause more environmental damage than conventional chemicals.

University of Guelph researchers said natural compounds often are used in higher doses than traditional chemical pesticides, resulting in potentially more problems for the water table and other parts of the ecosystem.

"These data bring into caution the widely held assumption that organic pesticides are more environmentally benign than synthetic ones," said a synopsis of the paper published in the most recent edition of PLoS ONE, an online magazine that publishes medical and scientific research.

Some municipalities have prohibited the use of synthetic compounds on the theory that artificial substances will leach into the ground and the water table and cause more long-lasting damage to the local ecosystem.

Some provinces have already banned the use of so-called natural pesticides.

The Guelph study ...examined the environmental impact of natural compounds by looking at the active ingredients of these substances based upon factors such as their leaching rates and toxicity to wildlife.

The five Guelph scientists involved in the study, including Rebecca Hallett, a professor at Guelph's School of Environmental Science, looked at compounds used to combat soybean aphids, a major destroyer of that crop.

"Ultimately, the organic products were much less effective than the novel and conventional pesticides at killing the aphids and they have a potentially higher environmental impact," Hallett said.

www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/06/23/guelph-pesticide-study.html#ixzz0rl9Vrg5K

[changling]

09:31 PM on 06/23/2010

It's great that people are realizing how badly we need the bees but until GMO's are abolished it will be hard to save them and other pollinators.