2007 Leadership Awards: The True Environmental Stewards

The Green Industry embodies much more than simply the business of product application to combat harmful insects, weeds or diseases that plague our national landscapes. Green Industry leaders are concerned with saving that old, magnificent ash tree in your backyard that shades your home, protecting your children from fire ant attacks at recess, and enhancing the physical beauty of treasured historical landmarks.
 
We at Bayer Environmental Science, a business division of Bayer CropScience LP, are proud to support the Green Industry in its daily endeavors to uphold environmental quality and preserve our lush forests, manicured neighborhoods, beautiful golf courses, and spotless athletic fields.

Collectively, we must resolve that education is instrumental in this vision of the future.  Bayer doggedly works with its academic counterparts to gather the latest research, and through ingenuity and innovation, we are able offer Green Industry professionals the latest products and technology that help save time and money. For example, Bayer recently launched TopChoice® plus Fertilizer, providing two solutions in one application – fire ant control and turf nourishment. We also introduced Merit® Tree Injection Insecticide, offering flexibility of pesticide use where soil application is not feasible.
 
Bayer understands that often it is not enough to just provide these new products and technical training—green industry professionals want to learn business strategies and tactics to grow their operations. In 2007, the Bayer Lawn Care Institute™ hosted its inaugural Healthy Lawns, Healthy Business Summits to coach lawn care operators in the most effective business practices to support their bottom lines.
 
But it does not stop here. The trickle-down education must continue.
 
Green Industry professionals must relay their industry knowledge to their customers when selling their services. We must address public misconceptions about pesticide use head-on and promote the importance of services such as fighting invasive pests like hemlock woolly adelgid, emerald ash borer or bronze birch borer before they decimate our tree populations and create enormous environmental repercussions. 
 
And most importantly, Green Industry professionals must educate the decision-makers at local, state and federal levels. I challenge you all to become vocal ambassadors for the Green Industry. As a group, we must exercise prudence and forethought, and we must be tenacious in our efforts to establish our presence on Capitol Hill.
 
Each year, Bayer is proud to participate in PLANET’S Legislative Day on the Hill. This event reinforces the message that the Green Industry strives to sustain our environment and our communities, and we require legislation that permits us to do just that. Additionally, Bayer is proud to support national organizations like Project Evergreen in efforts to collectively engage the Green Industry in touting to the American public the universal benefits of well-maintained green spaces and promoting the contributions of those who preserve and enhance these healthy landscapes. We must all work as one unified voice to prevent our beautiful landscapes from being reduced only to pages in the history books.

Neil Cleveland
Director, U.S. Green Business
Bayer Environmental Science