Reduced chemical street weeding trials

As part of our response to the climate emergency, we are committed to reducing our environmental impacts, protecting local biodiversity, and ensuring the borough is a place that is safe and healthy for people to live and work.

To do this, we continue to trial greener ways of managing plant growth.

Reducing chemical herbicides

Like other councils, we have historically used a weed killer containing a chemical herbicide called glyphosate to control street plant growth. We have reduced the quantity in recent years, including no longer spraying this around the base of street trees.

Local residents raised concerns to us about the use of glyphosate on public streets and asked us to consider alternative methods of controlling wild plants.

Actions

We listened to concerns, and in April 2023, our Environment Committee set about taking action. This led to the development of three limited trials in 2024 to test different, approaches to reducing or eliminating the use of glyphosate on public streets, looking at effectiveness and environmental criteria.

Following the results of those trials, we will run two more limited trials in 2026.

2024 trials

The 2024 trials lasted for one full growing season, starting in April 2024.

They were delivered in three areas of St Margarets and North Twickenham. We have collected regular feedback from people who live and work in the area as part of this process, which is being reviewed, considered and compiled into a final evaluation report of the trials. 

The Environment, Sustainability, Culture and Sports Committee will review the final report and make a decision about the way forward in 2025.

View more details about the 2024 trials.

2026 Trials

Building on the 2024 trials, we will run two more trials in 2026 in limited areas. We'll again test alternative approaches that could help limit glyphosate use.
 
View more details about the 2026 trials.