There are many parts of the country where residential customers still seek out the spraying of pesticides to kill bed bugs, ants, and other crawling insects as a normal way of asking for a treatment. In many ways, this is out of habit, with most people having grown up using chemicals to treat for insects.

But like anything in life, habits can change. The use of green products in pest control has grown steadily over the last several years among Pest Management Professionals (PMPs) and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.

The last State of the Naturals survey conducted by PCT and Readex Research found that PMPs, on average, consider just over 18 percent of the solutions they use for treating pests to be “green.” Twenty nine percent of PMPs use “green products” as a part of their standard protocol program and 36 percent of them use “green products” in sensitive locations only.

Adding a green product to your standard program offering will do a few things for your business:
• First, you’ll be able to cater to an important segment of the customer base and a loyal one at that;
• Second, green products allow you to treat sensitive areas like hospitals, schools, senior centers, etc.; and
• Third, you can brag about using a product that truly has fewer resistant properties (or in some cases none) than chemical pesticides.

It is also important to showcase natural solutions when seeking an IPM solution to pest problems. This includes the ability to eliminate resistance issues while increasing performance. Toxicity levels are greatly reduced as well as when compared to using conventional pesticides.

A Green Protocol
Developing a green protocol is really taking what’s truly an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to pest control. IPM was first developed as a method of protecting both facilities and their sensitive contents – think museums, archives, libraries – from products that could, over the short and long term, cause damage to both.

By implementing an IPM program, PMPs are committing to several aspects of pest control, including: not just insect removal but more importantly, prevention of pests; and use of least toxic products – and in many cases products with zero toxicity to humans and pets.

The advantages to offering a green protocol to your customers will provide these specific benefits: reduced or no use of chemical pesticides provides reduced risk to humans and pets; less chance of damage to the environment and the valued contents of certain facilities. Again – think of libraries and archives.

IPM potentially offers a cost savings for you as you will likely be using less pesticides than in a conventional program. In addition, many commercial customers will ask if you provide IPM programs.

Here’s a process for implementing a green program, step-by-step:
1) Formulate the list of products you’ll be using and which pests you’ll be using them to target.
2) Develop a list of facilities where you’ll be treating those pests and then make changes to your product protocol based on whether or not those products are allowed to be used in those settings.
3) Set goals for your green program – establish agreed upon thresholds to prevent call backs.
4) Educate your customers; expect insects to appear occasionally; this is an expected part of the process, not a sign of failure.
5) Monitor and track your results – make changes as needed based on performance.

Implement strong communications protocols with your customers. This will enable you to more effectively track the progress of your green program, just as you would with any conventional service.

As your green program bears fruit – it’s time to help you and your customers celebrate the successes. For you, it’s about touting the fact that your customers have fewer insects and that the issues they have been facing are now going away on a long-term basis and in a safer way than previously attempted.

In addition, if you’re treating a commercial customer like a hospital, senior center, or school – they can tout through their own public relations efforts that they are working hard to keep their customers safe by using a green pest control program – making it a win-win for everyone.

About EcoRaider
EcoRaider is a highly efficacious botanical-based bio-insecticide that can be applied anywhere bed bugs or ants are found without restriction. It carries no signal words or cautions and has no label restrictions or precautions on usage.

Because EcoRaider is a green product, it is an ideal fit for sensitive accounts and environments where low-impact methods are advised. These include college dorms, senior-living facilities, managed-care and assisted-living housing, schools, health-care facilities, public housing, multi-family, and hotels.

For more information, visit https://www.ecovengerpro.com/ or call 1-800-338-0212. Also, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

EcoRaider’s green formulation not only provides the product with a variety of benefits from a resistance perspective – in other words, its natural makeup means it doesn’t have resistance issues – but one of the larger aspects is that the product is FIFRA 25(b) Exempt. What does this mean?

EcoRaider is categorized as FIFRA 25(b) Exempt because the product is minimum or low risk when it comes to the product’s classification with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This designation allows it to be used in many settings where traditional pesticides cannot.

EcoRaider’s low risk comes because it attacks a unique insect receptor that does not exist in vertebrates and thus distinguishes between target insects and non-target humans & pets. So, it is lethal to target insects but of minimum risk to humans & pets.

As a result, EcoRaider can be used in sensitive environments ranging from Homes, Nursing Homes, Restaurants, Office Buildings, Hotels/ Motels, Day Care Centers, Dormitories, Hospitals / Medical
Schools, and Public Transport.

About EcoRaider
EcoRaider is a highly efficacious botanical-based bio-insecticide that can be applied anywhere bed bugs or ants are found without restriction. It carries no signal words or cautions and has no label restrictions or precautions on usage.

Because EcoRaider is a green product, it is an ideal fit for sensitive accounts and environments where low-impact methods are advised. These include college dorms, senior-living facilities, managed-care and assisted-living housing, schools, health-care facilities, public housing, multi-family, and hotels.

To learn more about the product, visit www.ecoraiderpmp.com. Also, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

EcoRaider was featured on PCT’s Bed Bug Virtual Conference on June 28th. This was the second consecutive year EcoRaider has been showcased as part of PCT’s online bed bug conference.

To listen to the podcast click here.

EcoRaider had approximately 10 minutes for Marketing Manager Ed DeMask to speak to Pest Management Professionals (PMPs) about how bed bug resistance develops, the cost of it, and how ER-22 by EcoRaider plays a key role as a “drop in” tool for resistance management.

In addition, the core speakers included PCT Publisher Dan Moreland (Bed Bugs: An Evolving Marketplace), Dr. Dini Miller (Bed Bug Control in Commercial Accounts), Larry Pinto (Bed Bug Best Practices), and Gene White (Hoarders & Other Psychological Challenges in Bed Bug IPM).

About EcoRaider
EcoRaider is a highly efficacious botanical-based bio-insecticide that can be applied anywhere bed bugs or ants are found without restriction. It carries no signal words or cautions and has no label restrictions or precautions on usage.

Because EcoRaider is a green product, it is an ideal fit for sensitive accounts and environments where low-impact methods are advised. These include college dorms, senior-living facilities, managed-care and assisted-living housing, schools, health-care facilities, public housing, multi-family, and hotels.

For more information, visit https://www.ecovengerpro.com/ or call 1-800-338-0212. Also, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

College and university housing professionals are facing a large bed bug problem with their international student population – mainly because those coming in from other countries don’t have the insect prioritized as importantly as American students do, per Bob Hughes, a veteran pest management professional who has worked with major universities for years to control bed bugs.

“With international traveling students, because some of the cultures in the world are not as concerned as we are with bed bugs they see it as a nuisance pest and not a health hazard,” said Hughes, a 20-year pest management professional who has worked supporting university pest control departments throughout the Midwest.

“You see the problem more so in international housing because schools tend to group international students together by country and culture so they have some familiarity. Thus, they have a bond and when there’s a bed bug problem students tend to not throw their friends ‘under the bus’ by tattling on them. That’s how it gets out of hand.”

A major issue facing pesticide control of bed bugs, Hughes said, is resistance. Bed bugs have formed a resistance to common insecticides, according to a study by University of Sydney researchers published in April 2016 in the journal PLOS One.

“Resistance is a tough issue because pesticides can’t skirt around it, it’s truly an issue and that’s why there are always other products to turn to but this study showed that most common insecticides are giving way to some form of resistance.

“I’ve run into it before, several times actually and the first was at least six or eight years ago, before it became news. Now once you experience that you have to seek alternative approaches for bed bug treatment.”

According to Hughes, EcoRaider and its botanical or “green” formulation allows for a strong performance but it is not susceptible to resistance, which makes it a game changer when seeking a product that can actually kill a bed bug infestation once and for all.

“EcoRaider is really good because its formulation is designed to prevent resistance and to help end a bed bug problem,” Hughes said. “By using EcoRaider, universities can help break that cycle of never truly taking care of the problem because it delivers the power of performance with the safety of a green product.”

About EcoRaider
EcoRaider is a highly efficacious botanical-based bio-insecticide that can be applied anywhere bed bugs or ants are found without restriction. It carries no signal words or cautions and has no label restrictions or precautions on usage.

Because EcoRaider is a green product, it is an ideal fit for sensitive accounts and environments where low-impact methods are advised. These include college dorms, senior-living facilities, managed-care and assisted-living housing, schools, health-care facilities, public housing, multi-family, and hotels.

For more information, visit https://www.ecovengerpro.com/ or call 1-800-338-0212. Also, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

With the summer vacation season well underway, guests are coming and going and the opportunity for your hotel or motel to get bed bugs is increasingly high during June, July, and August. So being proactive and preventative will help you avoid the nasty insects as best you can. Follow some of the simple steps below to protect your facility from bed bugs:

1 – Have a plan. Just like every business should have a disaster plan for succession planning during the worst times possible, hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts need to be ready for bed bugs. Detail the daily, weekly and monthly cleanings and pest control services that have been provided to know how recently a room has been protected.

2 – Train your staff. From housekeeping to facilities management to front office management, your staff needs to know how to deal with a bed bug infestation or even a report of one. Respond immediately to all requests by guests, move them to a new room and do whatever you can to eliminate their concerns as quickly as possible. The more you do at the moment they report it, the less chance you’ll ever hear of it on social media.

3 – React properly. Remember that not only is a bed bug infestation or report affecting one room, it should be affecting several rooms. Consider the guests in the adjoining and above and below rooms, as well. Inform, relocate and pamper those guests the same way you did the first one.

4 – Be proactive. Hire a licensed Pest Management Professional (PMP) to regularly inspect and treat your entire facility. Using monitoring products is a proactive way to stay ahead of an infestation, and so is using strong natural products that are university-researched and proven to kill bed bugs, like EcoRaider.

For more information about bed bug prevention, visit the National Pest Management Association’s protocol for bed bugs in hotels and lodging.