‘Pesticides’ is an umbrella term for a wide range of compounds including herbicides (designed to kill plants), insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, molluscicides and nematicides. There is a common misconception that the term ‘pesticides’ refers solely to substances designed to kill insects, but this is incorrect.
The Pesticide-Free Towns campaign focuses on ending the use of all pesticides by local councils. However, in reality, almost all of the pesticides used by councils are herbicides and the vast majority of those are glyphosate-based.
This project involved sending Freedom of Information requests to almost 400 councils which then provided us with roughly 3,600 individual pieces of data. In order to make it manageable, we focussed our enquiries solely on councils’ herbicide use. Given that this makes up more than 95% of the total pesticides used by local councils, it is certainly sufficient to provide a useful overview of pesticide use by UK councils.