Sustainable Pesticides

A term that has been used by the pesticide industry in recent years to project a positive and softer image of pesticides. Used responsibly and appropriately some pesticides can offer short-term solutions to some problems. However, introducing man-made substances into the environment is not a principle of sustainability, and is the opposite to what should be occurring, i.e. the removal and explicit non-introduction of man-made substances. This term might be considered an oxymoron and can be argued to be an attempt to ‘greenwash' the use of pesticides.