An Ignoble Experiment: Sign the petition: Lowe’s must stop killing bees

2015/01/29

Sign the petition: Lowe’s must stop killing bees

Tell Lowe's: Stop selling bee-killing pesticides.

Sign the petition to Lowe's:
"Your stores are contributing to the rapid collapse of bee populations by selling garden plants that are pre-treated with bee-killing, neonicotinoid pesticides. You must immediately stop selling all products that contain neonicotinoids."

Add your name:

Dear Indiana,

Global bee populations are declining at an alarming rate and putting our food supply at risk – and a growing body of scientific evidence places the blame squarely on neonicotinoid pesticides.¹

Momentum is building in the fight to save bees from this deadly class of pesticides. Nearly a dozen American retailers have recently announced plans to limit or ban neonicotinoids from their shelves.

Yet Lowe's continues to sell plants treated with bee-killing pesticides at many of its 1,700 stores – and bees can't afford any further delays.

Sign the petition: Tell Lowe's to stop selling bee-killing pesticides. Click here to sign the petition.

Pollinators make possible more than a third of global food production and contribute more than $24 billion to the U.S. economy each year. But due to bee die-offs, the number of managed honeybee colonies in the U.S. has declined from 6 million in the 1940s to just 2.5 million today – jeopardizing our food supply and putting our domestic agriculture industry in peril.³

The federal government should have banned neonicotinoid pesticides a long time ago, but the EPA continues to study the issue and doesn't plan to act for several more years. If the EPA won't act, we need to make sure big retailers like Lowe's feel the sting of public opinion directly.

A study released recently by the Pesticide Research Institute and Friends of the Earth found that more than 50 percent of the supposedly "bee-friendly" garden plants sold at stores like Lowe's have been pre-treated with bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.⁴

Lowe's is the second largest hardware and home supply store globally, with more than 1,700 locations in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Australia. By pressuring Lowe's to take this simple step to save bees, we'll build momentum for other major retailers to stop selling bee-killing pesticides, and put additional pressure on the EPA to ban neonicotinoids once and for all.

Sign the petition: Lowe's must stop selling bee-killing pesticides. Click here to sign the petition.

Thanks for fighting to save our pollinators.

Josh Nelson, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Add your name:

1. "Systemic pesticides pose global threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services," International Union for Conservation of Nature, June 24, 2014.
2. "Home Depot to Require Neonicotinoids Labeling," July 1, 2014.
3. "Fact Sheet: The Economic Challenge Posed by Declining Pollinator Populations," The White House, June 20, 2014.
4. "New tests find bee-killing pesticides in 51% of "bee-friendly" plants from garden centers across U.S. and Canada," Friends of the Earth, June 25, 2014.