It’s important to understand how herbicides and pesticides impact the disposal process and the resulting organic products.
What are herbicides and pesticides?
Persistent herbicides or pesticides are chemicals that last a long time in our environment. These kind of chemicals are used on farms, in turf or plant management, on fruits and vegetables or even around your home. Many of the pathways for decomposition of these chemicals are ineffective or take a significant amount of time to disappear. If some of these more persistent chemicals are present on feedstock accepted at a compost site, they can have detrimental effects on more sensitive plants during the growing process.
There are thousands of herbicide and pesticide products on the market today that could potentially make it into a compost site through certain feedstocks. SET requests that customers do not bring us any materials or feedstocks that could potentially contain any chemicals. Our team works hard to properly and safely finish materials during the composting process so as to reduce the possibility of future problems or contamination to the customer. SET is committed to using feedstocks that are less likely to contain persistent chemicals. We do regular testing on our finished products for chemicals that may be a higher risk of causing plant toxicity.
We take all necessary precautions when accepting materials at our sites to minimize the potential for these chemicals entering our products. Our knowledgeable team inspects all incoming material and verifies sources, where and when possible, to determine the best course for recovery and recycling of each material into a high-quality soil blend or mulch product.
Additional Resources
SET provides high-quality organic products:
