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 Lowe's
to eliminate pesticides that hurt crop pollinating honeybees
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[April 10, 2015]
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Home improvement
chain Lowe's Cos Inc will stop selling a type of pesticide suspected of
causing a decline in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key
American crops, following a few U.S. retailers who have taken similar
steps last year.
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 The class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, are
sold by agrichemical companies to boost yields of staple crops but
are also used widely on annual and perennial plants used in lawns
and gardens.
Scientists, consumer groups, beekeepers and others say bee deaths
are linked to the neonic pesticides. The bee die-off is worrisome
for agriculture because honeybees pollinate plants that produce
about a fourth of the food consumed by Americans.
Lowe's said it will phase out neonics in shelf products and plants
by the spring of 2019, as suitable alternatives become available.
A study released by environment group Friends of the Earth and
Pesticide Research Institute in 2014 showed that 51 percent of
garden plants purchased at Lowe's, Home Depot and Walmart in 18
cities in the United States and Canada contained neonicotinoid
pesticides at levels that could harm or even kill bees.
In 2014, the White House announced a plan to fund new honeybee
habitats and to form a task force to study how to reverse the
honeybee declines.
Last year, BJ's Wholesale Club, a warehouse retailer said it was
asking all of its vendors to provide plants free of neonics by the
end of 2014 or to label such products.
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Home Depot, the largest U.S. home improvement chain, also asked its
suppliers to start labeling any plants treated with neonics and that
it was running tests in several states to see if suppliers can
eliminate neonics in their plant production without hurting plant
health.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Chicago; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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