City Council Reverses Ban on Use of Weedkiller

Brighton & Hove City Council has reversed a ban on the use of weedkillers in order to take back control of the city’s weed problem. But the decision has been met with widespread opposition from eco-campaigners, who believe the use of glyphosate—the active ingredient in most weedkillers—harms the city’s ecosystem. Brighton and Hove introduced the ban in 2019, prompted by concerns that glyphosate causes cancer and harms the environment and the wildlife. The council had stopped using weedkillers in all the city’s parks, open spaces, pavements, verges and housing land. But on Tuesday, councillors voted to reverse the five-year ban and use a “controlled-droplet application of glyphosate to manage and remove weeds from hard surfaces.”...