For the past four years, we have been conducting an amnesty to remove illegal, out-of-date, or unidentifiable pesticides from farms through our Upstream Thinking project.
As the scheme ended in August (2019), we are pleased to have helped remove five tonnes of chemicals during this time, which could have risked drinking water supply, either by inappropriate disposal, leakage or container damage.
For farmers this free disposal has been worth at least £300 and has helped them meet assurance requirements.
A few surprise finds included a tin of DDT banned since 1972, multiple old sheep dips, 23 kg of Isoproturon (banned in 2009), 60 kg of Paraquat (banned in 2007), 25 kg of Atrazine (banned in 2004) and some 790 kg of unidentifiable chemicals.
Our farm advisors collated the chemicals on farm and organised their collection and safe and efficient disposal through Peake GB Ltd.
Visit our Upstream Thinking page to find out more about our work with South West Water.