Organic Gardening-pros and cons

True. But you can make sure that you aren't contributing to the problem yourself, and keep the worst of it out of your own garden!

 

I think the term 'organic' is misleading. People take it to be a synonym of 'natural', but it doesn't mean that. I think that's a big problem, because people believe that 'organic' = good, not organic = bad, with no grey area in between. For something to be organic simply means that its molecules have to be carbon based (or something like that, I'm no chemist). Marketing folks have capitalised on the organic trend, and sell us all sorts of stuff labeled as organic in the attempt of making us pay a bit more because we are doing our bit. It is something we need to be careful of if we are keen to be eco-friendly.

But I agree with Andrew's point. I think we should all try to take a more natural approach where possible, but to be honest most people I know do endeavour to do things naturally where possible anyway, not so much for moral reasons but just because they learn't much of what they know off their dad's, who learnt from their dad's and so on. I suspect (and could be very, very wrong) that the age group of folks that are most likely to routinely reach for the chemicals would be those that did most of their growing up in the 1980s, because it seems to me that during that time we went through a rather bizarre period of consumerism and were led to believe that science, in particular chemistry, had the answer to everything and anything that was not linked to the latest science was simply old fashioned and there was no place for it.

 

It is also largely dictated by what time people have available. I can afford to spend hours crushing aphids, some others aren't so lucky.