Steritech, Inc.'s PESP Strategy

The Steritech Group, Inc. is composed of 27 branches that provide EcoSensitive® Pest Prevention programs to commercial accounts nationwide. On an annual basis, we service approximately 13,000 commercial accounts.

Describe your Organization’s Five-Year Goals Related to Pesticide Risk Reduction

Our goal is to minimize the usage of traditional pesticides, especially residual sprays, aerosols, and dusts containing nervous system targeting active ingredients.

What do you envision doing (broadly) to try to resolve your major issues?

Whenever possible, we are replacing these pesticides with reduced/minimal risk formulations, and enhancing the focus on: physical removal of pests (by vacuuming), trapping devices, monitoring based applications and biological agents such as parasitoids and bacteria. We are also committed to increased usage of low-risk natural plant oil pesticides as a replacement to pesticides targeting the nervous system. This strategy is well underway for mice, houseflies, cockroaches, and ants. For all pests, we are improving our monitoring methods, thereby enabling more accurate spatial and temporal targeting of our pest prevention efforts. Through extensive in-house training, we are increasing our Service Specialists' knowledge about pest ecology and EcoSensitive® Pest Prevention. Finally, the Steritech Technical Committee continues to search for strategies to make our pest prevention programs even more effective against stored products pests, commercial food production/processing facilities pests, museum pests, and occasional invaders.

Goal 1 and Tactics

Increase pesticide application efficiency though integrated management tactics for cockroaches. This will be evaluated on reducing additional and unscheduled service calls for the control and prevention of cockroaches by 20%. This will be accomplished by monitoring:

increased usage of diatomaceous earth products
maintain consistent usage of inorganic dusts
increased usage of insect growth regulators
increased usage of minimal risk cockroach baits
increased usage of insect monitors (glue traps)
decreased usage of natural and synthetic liquid/aerosol pyrethroid sprays

Baseline data will be established with data obtained for calendar year 2007 and compared to future years. Progress will be based on:

the pounds of inorganic insecticidal dusts, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues.
the pounds of diatomaceous earth applied, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues.
the ounces of natural and synthetic liquid/aerosol pyrethroid sprays applied, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues.
the ounces of insect growth regulators applied, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues.
the quantity of insect monitors placed, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues.
the quantity of minimal risk cockroach baits applied, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues.
correlate product categories with added or reduced service calls for cockroaches.

Success will be determined by a reduction in the percentage of unscheduled services generated for the control of cockroaches.

Goal 2 and Tactics

Increase pesticide application efficiency though integrated management tactics for ants. This will be evaluated through reducing frequency of additional and unscheduled service calls for native ants by 20%. This will be accomplished by:

increased usage of granular and liquid inorganic ant baits
increased usage of minimal and reduced risk ant baits
consistent usage of fipronil / chlorfenapyr liquid sprays
reduced usage of granular pyrethroid insecticides

Baseline data will be established with data obtained for calendar year 2007 and compared to future years. Progress will be based on:

the increased usage of minimal and reduced risk baits, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues
the increased usage of granular and liquid organic baits, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues
the reduced usage of granular pyrethroid insecticides
the consistent usage of sprays containing fipronil and chlorfenapyr, represented as purchases per $1 million in revenues
correlate product categories with added or reduced service call for ants.

Success will be determined by a reduction in the percentage of unscheduled services generated for the control of native ants.

Goal 3 and Tactics

Promote and implement biological oriented control programs throughout the company by 25%. Biological controls include the use of biological cleaning agents, bacteria (Bacillus thuringiensis) and parasitizing/predator insects.

Baseline data will be established with data collected for calendar year 2007 and compared to future years. Progress will be based on:

the percentage increase in biological control products purchased/used based in dollars (represented as purchases per $1 million in revenue), volume or mass for each biological control
- biological cleaning agents
- biological agents (B.t.)
- parasitizing/predator insects
the percentage of branches offering biological control programs using:
- biological cleaning agents
- biological agents (B.t.)
- parasitizing/predator insects