Your statement about “They were spraying poison on what they called ‘weeds’ in the recently built garden intended only to clean stormwater before sending it away, wasted, to pollute Sydney Harbour” didn’t seem quite right to me as water is not wasted by returning to the water cycle, it’s that we don’t make good use of it on its journey, such as harvesting it for irrigating plants.

Spraying glysophate in public places troubles colleagues of mine in the Inner West too, Marrickville Council. Councils spray the stuff because it’s cost effective compared to other methods. The feedback I get about the steam weed eradication process is that it is expensive, that the moisture put into the soil could encourage the return and growth of weeds and that the energy required to produce the steam makes for a carbon intensive form of weed control.

But maybe they’re asking the wrong question, perhaps it need not be about weed control but letting the weeds, except for the most noxious types, grow.

We have to look to bush regenerators, too, when it comes to using glysophate in public places as they seem to have embraced this Monsanto product and use it to paint or spray on what they classify as ‘envronmental weeds’. (as if th urban environment was not a ‘proper’ environment).

Once a practice like spraying is establshed in councils it’s hard for them to change course and the only thing that will do that is public prssure.