Our New Approach
It is said that the younger generations often inspire the older and for Mosquito Joe that is very true. For several years now, Molly has been helping in the office over the summers. She started working for us in her sophomore year of high school and has been a great asset to us ever since, taking on more responsibilities each year. Molly is now in her second year at Corpus Christi A&M where she studies marketing. She has also developed a growing interest in conservation and the environment and is interning at The Harte Research Institute.
Molly’s passion for conservation and the environment is palpable and her excitement for doing our part and changing our way of thinking has caught on.
The Texas Department of Agriculture has very specific rules regarding the disposal of pest control bottles. They must be triple rinsed, the top and labels removed, and then sliced open before being thrown out. We’ve been doing that at Mosquito Joe since we opened. But pushed on by Molly’s passion we researched and discovered that we are lucky enough to have a location of US Ag Recycling near us in Waller County. This free service allows us to prepare our empty bottles and then drop them off to be recycled. We go through a lot of bottles annually, so this simple change makes a huge difference in the long run.
Encouraged by this change we then learned some surprising news about our recycling. Most sources suggest that 85% of the products we sort and put out for recycling do not actually get recycled, but instead end up in a landfill. That was a shocking discovery for us. You can learn more about that here. We decided that we didn’t want to play a role in leaving more waste behind so Mosquito Joe started recycling the boxes our bottles arrive in, all the paper in the office, water bottles that the technicians drink during the day, and more. We sort them in our warehouse and make regular trips to the Montgomery Country Precinct 2 recycling center. There are several recycling centers around if you want to get involved. They do take things seriously there, so we make sure that everything is clean, flattened, and organized as we go.
We take our impact on the environment seriously and are always talking about the lengths we go to protect our bees and butterflies by using garlic around flowering plants. We monitor wind at every home we treat to make sure we don’t have any potential for drift. We treat every yard individually so that we get rid of your mosquitoes but don’t impact your beneficial insects. It suddenly occurred to us that we are only doing half a job if we support the environment during our services but don’t after the fact.
We encourage all of you to jump in where you can so we can reduce our footprint on the Earth. It feels good to take these steps and our efforts have spilled out into our homes and among our employees. The passion of one individual has led to a lot of changes for our company, and we are proud to be a part of a solution rather than a problem. If you are interested in learning more about the steps students at A&M are taking you can visit the Blue Value website, where students like Molly blog about their ideas and conservation work.
