Press release from SumOfUs.
More than 125,000 people are joining with SumOfUs.org, a global consumer watchdog organization, in urging the Home Depot and Lowe’s, America’s largest garden supply stores, to stop selling bee-poisoning pesticides containing neonicotinoids and join in the national effort to save America’s bees.
View the petition here.
“Lowe’s and Home Depot still stock their shelves with neonicotinoid pesticides, spreading the ecosystem-destroying toxin to homes and gardens across the United States,” said Kaytee Riek, campaign manager for SumOfUs.org “As consumers, we need to demand that these retailers pull the devastating pesticides from the shelves.”
“With up to a third of all honeybees vanishing each winter, beekeepers are saying that we are ‘on the brink’ of not being able to pollinate all our crops,” added Riek. “This is a global emergency.”
Scientists studying the massive global bee die-off have unearthed a slew of evidence on the devastation across the food chain caused by the most widely-used pesticide on Earth, neonicotinoids. Once they enter the water supply, neonicotinoids wipe out dragonflies, snails and other waterborne life. One of the reasons these pesticides are so toxic is that they don’t simply coat the surface — neonicotinoids are absorbed into the plant itself. Honeybees that stop by later to pollinate the crops quickly accrue a lethal dose in their systems as they wander from flower to flower. The neurotoxin scrambles their system of navigation and other critical parts of the bee’s brains. Even when it doesn’t kill the bees outright, neonicotinoids alter immune system function in bees, making them more vulnerable to parasitic infections that are spreading through bee populations like wildfire.
Earlier this year, the European Food Safety Authority imposed a two-year ban on neonicotinoids. In addition to Lowe’s and the Home Depot, SumOfUs.org is targeting Australia’s Bunnings Warehouse and other companies for selling neonicotinoid pesticides.
For more information click here.
For interviews with SumOfUs.org, please contact Brett Abrams at 516-841-1105 or by email at brett@fitzgibbonmedia.com.
SumOfUs.org is a global movement of consumers, investors, and workers all around the world, standing together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable and just path for our global economy.
