Go Organic! Vote with Your Wallet, Vote with Your Fork is a campaign of the Maryland Smart on Pesticides Coalition of 96 organizations and businesses. We’re working to protect our babies, bees and the Bay from adverse impacts of pesticides, while promoting safer alternatives.
We cast a vote everyday with our wallet and our fork. Protect your health by avoiding pesticide laden food, products and services. Instead, choose organic or pesticide-free alternatives. Each choice is a powerful act that can reduce your toxic chemical body-burden. And, with every dollar you withhold from polluting industries, you’ll be creating greater demand for affordable, clean and organic alternatives.
Even adding a few organic or pesticide-free products can support your, and your family’s, health! Prices have fallen, so that some organic products and services can be little or no more expensive than pesticide reliant conventional products and services. See our Organic On A Budget page for tons of ideas and connections.
A Baltimore family goes organic for 1 week in a study examining pesticide body burden.
Ask your local orchard if they use chlorpyrifos on the apples, pears and pumpkins you’re buying?
Some stores are still selling these baned products. Download these easy steps to verify.
Find new suppliers for food (vote with your fork), services and products (vote with your wallet)—and learn the compelling reasons you should choose them. The following website sections will be expanded weekly with lots of new resources to help you move toward a pesticide-free lifestyle. Get started now, with the links below. Go Organic! Vote with Your Wallet, Vote with Your Fork.
Organic on a budget.
Avoid the Dirty Dozen.
Finding clean food.
Farmers market pocket guide.
GO Now.
Find Eco-friendly diapers,
organic beauty care,
healthy home products.
Safe home pest control.
GO now.
New farming trends.
Healthy lawn & garden.
Bee-safe plants, seeds.
Bee-safe pest control.
GO now.
Support clean farmers.
Find products, services,
shops and websites.
Guide to “eco” labels.
GO now.
Pesticide research library.
Go Organic principals.
Need to know strategies,
i.e. Safe mosquito control.
GO now.
On a tight budget?
No worries! Learn
cost-effective ways
to Go Organic,
enjoy the benefits,
on budget.
GO now.
Step 1: Pledge your intent
to buy less pesticide-
laden products, to vote with
your wallet & fork. Sign on!
GO now.
Join Smart on Pesticides
listserv for action alerts
on Maryland efforts to
reduce toxic impacts.
GO now.
Moving pest management away from toxic pesticides
Pesticides vary in their toxicity and in their potential to cause undesirable human and ecological impacts. Pest control materials that are effective on the target pest, yet relatively non-toxic with few ecological side-effects are sometimes called “biorational” pesticides; the EPA uses the term “biopesticides” for this pesticide type. The major categories of biorational pesticides include botanicals, microbials, minerals, and synthetic materials. Many, but not all, biorationals qualify for use on organic farms and are OMRI-certified.
This biopesticide market has advanced rapidly in the last 10 years, valued at $3.3 billion in 2017, it is expected to grow 13.9% to $9.5 billion by 2025.
– from Transparency Market Research
The IR-4 Project helps makers of these safer biopesticides test and register them so they can be brought to market. IR-4 Project has a searchable database that farmers and the public can use to identify these products for specific pest needs.
As you consider moving toward organic lawncare, gardening and pest control, you can access this database to find listings of products for non-toxic pest control here.
Beyond Pesticides also provides a list of non-toxic alternatives, here.
