©, \ Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program Strategy Submission Form PRO^4- Organization: Nvirotect Pest Control Services Describe Your Organization's Five-Year Goals Related to Pesticide Risk Reduction: i Where do you want your organization to be in five years as it relates to the major pest/pesticide issues facing your ndustry?) Nvirotect was developed in order to change the way pest control companies operate. As part of Nvirotect's Green initiatives we have successfully maintained properties in the commercial sector with no pesticide applications. We have also implemented an action threshold system as part of our IPM program that allows for product usage based on monitoring. Not just treat if necessary but a system that can determine the level of infestation. These systems will correlate to a treatment schedule. This schedule dictates what product is used and how it is to be used. In addition our service and sales technicians are trained on a weekly basis in new developments from manufactures and procedures from other leading companies. Over the next five years we would like to continue the development of these programs and grow our portfolio of facilities that are controlled through zero pesticide applications. As an organization we are focused on creating a healthier and safer environment for our customers and by minimizing pesticides and increasing preventative maintenance this can be achieved. 1. Continue to maintain our baiting strategies. 2. The use of IGR that are non pesticide based. 3. Continued uses of Food Grade Botanicals 4. Communication with our clients on how they can help by elimination of food sources, harborage and potential harborage areas. 5. Continue development of our satellite based monitoring system for all structures rather than our current limited version. This helps to develop custom strategies for each site. 6. Become Green Shield Certified. 7. Continue the development of our LEED focused program l/Vhat do you envision doing (broadly) to try to resolve your major issues? Address whether practical, accept- able solutions are available for the major pest, pesticide, or sustainability issues facing your organization. Nvirotect overall goal is to continue to be an innovator in technologies to reduce the need for pesticide. Some things we will do to help resolve these issues are: 1. Continue training our technicians on the importance of proper inspection and application procedures. 2. Develop strategies to help our clients understand the differences between conventional pest control and IPM 3. Ongoing technical training with our staff on proper exclusionary methods. 4. Continue our policy of no broadcast pesticide applications 5. Implement a full "natural" product line. ------- Goal 1 & Tactics (Describe your first goal and the tactics you will use to attain it. What might EPA be able to do or facilitate to help resolve these issues? How you will determine whether or not you have been successful in achieving your intended results? Are there objective, economically-feasible measures of success that you can utilize to evaluate the success of your efforts?) Continue our technician training program. Nvirotect has been focused on creating a highly detailed training program for all service and sales professionals in the organization. This training program primary focus is to train on the proper ways to minimize pesticide over time and the proper way to communicate the benefits to our customers. We utilize the Quality Pro Certification as a baseline and have developed a more in depts systems over time. We would like to work with the EPA in the development of a National program that could help traditional pest control companies to develop new procedures as well. The best way we can determine the success of our training is with our client survey program. With all of our commercial customers we have a follow up meeting 30 days after the initial service to address any concerns. The most important thing is as part of this survey we can track the success of our technicians and sales professionals' level of expertise in service procedures and expectations. The major objection that we face is with consumers that are set on paying for a provider to spray and we don't spray so periodically they will raise the question of the effectiveness of the service. This tends to go away after several months and proper education. From an economic standpoint it cost a tremendous amount to maintain the training programs. The additional development cost and labor cost associated with ongoing new programs is high. Over time we plan to automate the entire system and move to an online supplemented course. Goal 2 & Tactics (Describe your second goal and the tactics you will use to attain it. What might EPA be able to do or facilitate to help resolve these issues? How you will determine whether or not you have been successful in achieving your intended results? Are there objective, economically-feasible measures of success that you can utilize to evaluate the success of your efforts?) Our second goal is to work with one of the major universities on the development of a proprietary product line that is fully organic. With the current research available on many plants and live organisms in regards to the effectiveness against insects it is only natural that new products are developed. The challenge to this is the funding, over the next 5 years we would like to develop a complete R&D division to work on new products and procedures. Currently it is not economically feasible. The EPA could help in the creation of grants for organizations on a local level who work with universities. ------- |