Welsh Water launches “no questions asked” pesticide disposal service

Welsh Water has launched a new service providing free and confidential pesticide disposal to protect drinking water quality.

Farmers and land managers across Wales can register until 30 September for a first come, first served pesticide and herbicide disposal service, managing director of water services at Welsh Water,. Ian Christie, explained: “Our routine raw water monitoring programme has detected increasing traces of pesticides in areas we have never seen them before. While these levels are too low to pose a risk to those drinking the water, they are enough to risk breaching rigorous drinking water standards so we want to work with farmers, growers and land managers to take action to address this issue together.

“Even the most organised of land managers can find themselves with an out of date or now unlicensed product which can be difficult or expensive to dispose of correctly. To help them, we are launching a free ‘no questions asked’ disposal scheme to safely take away any unwanted pesticides and herbicides.”

The new service is part of Welsh Water’s PestSmart programme, which encourages people across Wales to consider ‘smarter’ ways of weed, pest and disease control that do not impact on people, water or wildlife. PestSmart is the latest campaign in the company’s WaterSource catchment management approach.