The 2012 UK government directives on the use of pesticides states that in areas used by the public, on sealed surfaces, railways, and roadsides “the amount used and the frequency of use are as low as reasonably practical”. This is widely interpreted as meaning it is not reasonable to do things like blanket spray a car park for weeds. The logic is that the whole surface does not need to be treated, only certain parts do i.e. where the weeds are coming through.
In some EU countries, before the outright banning of glyphosate usage in these situations, similar legislation was widely interpreted to mean that conventional sprayers were unacceptable. There was a de facto ban on conventional backpack sprayers and glyphosate could only be applied with more advanced and efficient controlled droplet application (CDA)/ultra low volume (ULV) sprayers. This is not yet the case in the UK but the existing legislation could be interpreted that way.
The simple fact of the matter is that CDA/ULV sprayers are more efficient and accurate than conventional sprayers. They will significantly reduce the amount of glyphosate that needs to be sprayed to do the job.
So, the only question is are they also “reasonably practical”? In our opinion they are.
From a cost perspective the additional hardware costs are normally recouped within the first year due to lower glyphosate use. So, there is no defensible argument against them being unreasonably expensive. Indeed, they should save money!
From a practical usage perspective, they are just as easy to use as conventional sprayers, they can spot spray and they are adjustable to give very precise spray areas.
From a health and safety / operator perspective, they are demonstrably safer, being easier to use and resulting in far less operator contamination risk.
In our opinion there is no reason to not use this technology in amenity and hard surface settings. As such the real question is not why should they be used but why aren’t they being used more? The only true answer to that is lack of knowledge. Once knowledge spreads these will become the only acceptable method of glyphosate use in these settings.
See our video version of this post here.
