The entire world is going green. "Green" could be your color of environmental dilemma, the impetus that pushes cutting-edge technology, the buzz word of the socially conscious. Concern for the environment and man's impact on it is bringing a ton of new services and products to marketpest control is no exception. Environmentally friendly pest control companies are growing in popularity, especially in the commercial industry. Even eco-savvy residential consumers are requesting about natural alternatives to pesticides that are traditional, however, their ardor frequently stinks when confronted by the 10 percent to 20% cost differential and more extended therapy intervals, some times a couple weeks.

The increasing of America's environmental consciousness, in conjunction with increasingly stringent national regulations regulating conventional chemical pesticides, appears to be changing the pest control industry's focus to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) methods. Of 378 pest management companies surveyed in 2008 by Pest Control Technology magazine, two-thirds said they offered IPM professional services of some kind.

Instead of lacing pest web sites with a poisonous cocktail of powerful insecticides designed to kill,'' IPM focuses on environmentally-friendly prevention methods designed to maintain insects out. While low- or no-toxicity products could also be utilised to support pests to package their bags, elimination and control efforts focus on finding and eliminating the causes of infestation: entry points, attractants, harborage and food.

Particularly popular with schools and assisted living facilities charged with guarding the fitness of the world's youngest and oldest citizens, those at highest risk from poisonous chemicals, IPM is catching the interest of hotels, office buildings, apartment complexes and other commercial sectors, in addition to low-income residential clients. Founded in equivalent parts by environmental concerns and health danger fears, interest in IPM is attracting a range of new environmentally friendly pest management products -- both high- and - low tech -- to promote.

"Probably the very best product out there is a door sweep," confided Tom Green, president of the Integrated Pest Management Institute of North America, a non-profit firm that permeates green exterminating companies. In an Associated Press interview posted on MSNBC on the past April, Green explained,"A mouse can squeeze through a gap the size of a pen diameter. So in the event you've got a quarter-inch gap underneath your door, so far as being a mouse is concerned, there isn't any door there at all." Cock Roaches can slither via a one-eighth inch crevice.

IPM has been"a better way to pest control to the wellness of your home, the environment and your family," 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 is a comparatively recent addition to the pest control arsenal, Mannes cautioned that there's minimal industry consensus on the definition of green services.

IPM favors mechanical, physical and cultural methods to control pests, but might use bio-pesticides derived from naturally occurring materials such as animals, plants, bacteria and certain minerals.

Some are ultra high tech like the quick-freeze Cryonite process for eliminating bed bugs. The others, like trained dogs who sniff out bed pests, look decidedly low-tech, but employ advanced methods to achieve benefits. By way of example, farmers have used dogs' sensitive noses to sniff out problem pests for years and years; however, training dogs to sniff out explosives and drugs is a relatively recent progress.

Yet another brand new pest control technique is birthcontrol. When bay area was jeopardized by mosquitoes carrying potentially lifethreatening 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 birth control for mosquitoes, the newest method was considered safer compared to airborne spraying with the chemical pyrethrum, the typical mosquito abatement procedure, as demonstrated by a recent report published on the National Public Radio site.

Naturally, there are efforts underway to build a better mousetrap. The advanced Track & Trap system brings mice or rats to a food channel dusted with powder. Rodents leave a blacklight-visible trail which allows pest control experts to secure entry avenues. Coming soon, night watch uses pheromone research to lure and trap bed bugs. In Englanda sonic apparatus made to repel squirrels and rats is being tested, along with the aptly named Rat Zapper is purported to supply a lethal shock using just two AA batteries.

With this influx of new environmentally friendly services and products rides a posse of national regulations. Even the EPA's 2004 banning of this chemical diazinon for household usage a few years past removed a potent ant-killer from the homeowner's insect control toolbox. Similarly, 2008 EPA regulations forbidding the selling of small quantities of effective rodenticides, unless sold inside an enclosed snare, has eliminated rodent-killing compounds from the shelves of hardware and diy stores, limiting the homeowner's ability to secure his family and property from these disease-carrying pests.


Acting for the public well, the authorities pesticide-control actions are particularly aimed at protecting children. According to a May 20, 2008 report CNN on the web, a report performed by the American Association of Poison Control Centers suggested that rat poison was in charge of almost 60,000 poisonings between 2001 and 2003, 250 of these leading to serious injuries or death. National Wildlife Service examining in California found rodenticide residue in every creature analyzed.

Individuals are embracing the notion of pest control and environmentally friendly, cutting off pest management products and processes. Availability and government regulations are limiting consumers' self-treatment options, forcing them to turn into professional pest control organizations to get relief from pest invasions. As this has established a viable alternative for industrial clients, few residential customers seem willing to pay high costs for newer, more more labor intensive green pest control products and fewer are prepared to wait for the additional week or two it may possibly take the products to do the job. It's taking leadership efforts for pest control businesses to educate consumers from the long term advantages of green and natural pest treatments.

Even though the cold, hard reality is that if individuals have a pest problemthey want it gone and they need it gone today! If rats or mice have been inside their house ruining their property and endangering their family together with disease, if termites or carpenter ants are eating away their home equity, even in case roaches are invading their toilet or if they're sharing their bed with bed bugs, consumer interest in ecological friendliness plummets. When the original source call a pest control business, the most important thing is that they desire the pests dead! Now! Pest control firms have been standing facing the tide of consumer demand for prompt eradication by enhancing their natural and green pest control product supplies. These fresh organic products require the responsible long term approach to pest control; the one which protects the environment, children, and our own wellbeing. Sometimes it is lonely moving against the tide of popular requirement, but true leadership, at the pest control business, means embracing these fresh natural technologies even when they are not popular with the consumer - yet.