The planet is definitely going green. "Green" could be your color of environmental dilemma, the impetus which compels cutting edge technology, the buzzword of this socially conscious. Concern for the environment and man's impact on it is bringing a slew of new products to promote pest control is no exception. Environmentally-friendly pest control providers are growing in popularity, particularly in the commercial industry. Even eco-savvy residential consumers are requesting about natural alternatives to pesticides that are traditional, but their ardor usually stinks when confronted by the 10% to 20% cost differential and longer treatment times, sometimes a few weeks.

The raising of America's environmental awareness, in conjunction with increasingly stringent national regulations regulating traditional chemical dyes, appears to be shifting the pest control industry's attention to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) methods. IPM is regarded as only safer for your environment, but safer for people, pets and secondary scavengers such as owls. Of 378 pest management businesses surveyed in 2008 from Pest Control Technology magazine, also twothirds said that they offered IPM services of some kind.

Rather than jelqing pest websites with a poisonous cocktail of powerful insecticides intended to kill,'' IPM is targeted on chemical avoidance techniques designed to maintain insects out. While non - or - no-toxicity services and products may also be utilised to encourage pests to pack their bags, control and removal efforts revolve around finding and eliminating the source of infestation: entry points, attractants, harborage and food.

Notably popular with both schools and nursing homes charged with protecting the fitness of the nation's youngest and oldest citizens, people at greatest risk from poisonous compounds, IPM is grabbing the eye of hotels, office buildings, apartment complexes and other industrial businesses, as well as eco-conscious residential customers. Driven in equal portions by environmental concerns and health danger anxieties, fascination with IPM is bringing a host of fresh environmentally friendly pest control products -- both high- and - low-tech -- to advertise.

In an Associated Press interview posted on MSNBC online last April, Green explained,"A mouse could squeeze through a hole the size of a pen diameter. Therefore, in the event that you've secured a quarter-inch gap under your doorway, as far as a mouse is more concerned, there isn't any door there at all." Cockroaches can slither through a oneeighth inch crevice.

IPM is"an improved approach to pest control to the health of the house, the surroundings and your household," explained Cindy Mannes, spokeswoman for the National Pest Management Association, the 6.3 billion pest control industry's own trade association, in exactly the same Associated Press story. But because IPM has been a relatively recent addition into the pest control toolbox, Mannes cautioned that there's not much industry consensus on this is of green services.

IPM prefers mechanical, cultural and physical techniques to control insects, but might use bio-pesticides produced from naturally-occurring materials such as animals, bacteria, plants and certain minerals.

Toxic chemical sprays are giving way to new, sometimes unconventional, means of treating pests. Others, like trained dogs that sniff out bed pests, look decidedly lowtech, but employ innovative techniques to reach benefits.

Still another brand new pest control procedure is birth control. After bay area was threatened by mosquitoes carrying potentially life threatening West Nile Virus, bicycle messengers were hired to flee the town and shed packets of biological insecticide in to the city's 20,000 storm drains. A kind of contraception for mosquitoes, the newest method has been considered safer than aerial spraying with the chemical pyrethrum, the normal mosquito abatement procedure, as per a recent story posted on the National Public Radio website.

Of course there are efforts underway to build a better mousetrap. Pest Control Henlow & Trap system brings rats or mice to your food station dusted with fluorescent powder. Rodents render a blacklight-visible trail which allows pest control experts to secure entrance paths. Coming soon, night watch uses pheromone research to lure and trap bed bugs. In England, a sonic device built to repel rats and squirrels is being analyzed, as well as the aptly called Rat Zapper is purported to deliver a deadly jolt using only two AA batteries.

With this influx of fresh environmentally-friendly services and products rides a posse of regulations. Critics of recent EPA regulations restricting the sale of certain pest-killing chemicals accuse the government of limiting a homeowner's power to protect his house. The EPA's 2004 banning of the chemical diazinon for household use a few years ago removed a potent ant-killer from the homeowner's insect control arsenal. Similarly, 2008 EPA regulations forbidding the selling of small amounts of effective rodenticides, unless sold inside a specific trap, has eliminated rodent-killing chemicals from the shelves of hardware and home improvement stores, limiting the homeowner's ability to protect his family and property from such disease-carrying pests.

Acting for the public well, the government's pesticide-control activities are especially aimed at protecting kids. Based on a May 20, 2008 report CNN online, a study performed by the American Association of Poison Control Centers indicated that the rat poison had been responsible for nearly 60,000 poisonings between 2001 and 2003, 250 of them resulting in serious accidents or death. National Wildlife Service testing in California found rodenticide residue in most animal analyzed.

Consumers are embracing the notion of natural pest control and environmentally-friendly, cutting off pest management products and processes. Availability and government regulations are limiting consumers' self-treatment alternatives, forcing them to show into professional pest control organizations for respite out of pest invasions. While this has established a viable solution for commercial customers, few residential customers seem willing to pay higher costs for newer, more labor intensive green pest control services and products and even fewer are willing to wait for the further week or 2 it could take these products to do the job. It is taking leadership efforts for pest control businesses to educate consumers in the long term benefits of green and organic pest control treatments.


Even though the cold, hard reality is that when individuals have a problem with pests they want it gone and so they need it gone today! If rats or rodents come within their property destroying their property and threatening their family with disease, if termites or carpenter ants are eating their home equity, if roaches are threatening their kitchen or should they are sharing their bed with bed bugs, even consumer attention in environmental surroundings plummets. When people call a pest control organization, the most important thing is that they desire the bugs dead! Now! Pest control firms have been standing up against the wave of consumer requirement for immediate eradication by enhancing their natural and green pest control product offerings. These brand new organic products take the most responsible long term approach to pest control; one that protects the environment, children, and also our own wellbeing. Sometimes it's lonely moving against the tide of popular demand, but true leadership, in the pest control industry, means embracing these new organic and natural technologies even when they are not popular with all the consumer - nonetheless.