Thank you for visiting the Black Pest Prevention Blog. It is our goal to provide you with some insightful information regarding household pest, along with the steps you can take to minimize their impact on you and your family. We welcome your comments and questions, and will do our best to respond in a timely manner.
Thank you again,
Black Pest Prevention
Proper ID of pests essential for effective control...
I just returned from a couple days in Arlington, Virginia, where I was attending the Environmental Protection Agency’s ESB (Environmental Stewardship Branch) meeting. This meeting laid the foundation for the new Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program (PESP), of which Black Pest Prevention is a member. The Program is undergoing some changes and Black Pest Prevention is actively participating in this effort.
The PESP is a voluntary collaboration between EPA, pesticide users, various interest groups, and other Government agencies, with the goal of reducing potential health and environmental risks associated with pesticide use and implementing pollution control strategies. You can visit the PESP website at www.epa.gov/pesp/ for additional information. Our company is committed to this effort, and is proud to be a partner while constantly looking inward to identify, implement, and measure ways that we can incorporate PESP strategies into our daily operations.
It was interesting and enlightening to sit in a room with participants ranging from pest management industry colleagues to representatives from groups such as Audubon and Beyond Pesticides, seeking common ground to move forward with the new PESP. Believe me when I say that all views were represented at this meeting! We made a great deal of progress as a group in defining some of the difficulties faced by PESP participants, and some ways to address them. For example, Black Pest Prevention strives to utilize integrated pest management (IPM) whenever possible to address customer issues. This approach involves integration of non-chemical control measures along with the judicious, targeted use of pesticides when necessary. We often find ourselves in situations where customers may not be aware of the long-term benefits of IPM, and we sometimes struggle to make people understand the importance of small changes around the home to make it a less inviting target for pests. All of the participants at the meeting agreed that increased educational efforts were in order to encourage consumers to understand – and demand – IPM.
So – as part of my efforts to see wiser use of pesticides and increased customer satisfaction – I will be explaining IPM in the next several posts, along with some details on why our customers should pay attention to the “helpful hints” forms we fill out and leave on every quarterly service. IPM requires some degree of patience and cooperation on the part of the customer….so, tune in and let me convince you of why you should be demanding IPM from us! Look for the first installment on Monday, November 23.
Keeping critters out of your home...