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Community Corner

DIG INTO LESS-TOXIC GARDENING WITH NEW APP

Our Water Our World and Chinook Book team up to make gardening and pest control easy for consumers, less polluting to local waters

 

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Navigating the huge selection of home and garden pest control products available in stores can be overwhelming. But it just got easier for Bay Area consumers. Our Water Our World has joined forces with Chinook Book on an exciting new mobile app that is available for FREE. 

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Our Water Our World is a collaboration between Bay Area water pollution prevention agencies and over 150 nurseries and hardware stores. The program addresses pest control products that can pollute local waters when they wash off grass and roads into storm drains during rainstorms or through overwatering. Since 1999 the Our Water Our World program has pointed consumers to effective pest control products that are less toxic to people, pets and the environment.

 

The free Chinook Book app takes the program into the digital age, making information about less toxic products available to every shopper with a smartphone, along with discount coupons from many local merchants. The Chinook Book app is available for download to mobile phones, from iTunes or Google Play.

 

“By launching this app with Chinook Book, we’ve just made all of our information available to everyone in the Bay Area with a smartphone,” says Geoff Brosseau of the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association, which developed the app with Chinook Book. “Consumers can be home—or anywhere else—and find stores near them that participate in the Our Water Our World program or simply search the app by type of pest to find the least polluting products to solve the problem. Less-toxic solutions to pest control problems are now at your fingertips.”

 

Development of the app was partially funded by the San Francisco Bay Water Quality Improvement Fund (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), through a grant to the San Francisco Estuary Partnership.

 

Our Water, Our World is a program of the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association, which focuses on regional challenges and opportunities to improve the quality of stormwater flowing to our local creeks, San Francisco Bay, the Delta and the ocean. For more information on Our Water Our World, visit ourwaterourworld.org. Learn more about water pollution prevention at baywise.org.

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