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Recently there have been reports of termite infested mulch coming from the Katrina-stricken areas of New Orleans.
 
Concern
Here is a synopsis of the issue being reported:
If you use mulch around your house be very careful about buying mulch this year. After the Hurricane in New Orleans many trees were blown over. These trees were then turned into mulch and the state is trying to get rid of tons and tons of this mulch to any state or company who will
come and haul it away. So it will be showing up in Home Depot and Lowe's at dirt cheap prices with one huge problem; Formosan Termites will be the bonus in many of those bags. New Orleans is one of the few areas in the country were the Formosan Termites have a strong hold and most of the trees blown down were already badly infested with those termites. Now we may have the worst case of transporting a problem to all parts of the country that we have ever had. These termites can eat a house in no time at all and we have no good control against them, so tell your friends that own homes to avoid cheap mulch and know were it came from.
 
Response
The following will help to reassure you relative to SBS' mulches and soil products.
 
Theoretically, if wood is on the ground, termites could conceivably infest it. However, in nearly 35 years of being in business SBS has had zero reports of termite problems in their materials. In addition, termites would not like to be in SBS mulch, due to its fine texture, and partially composted state. It seems that termites prefer to live underground and in non-open air environments, hence the tunneling systems they create. Beyond these items, here is some additional information that can help rest your mind. First of all, at SBS, we put all of our mulches through multiple heat sterilization processes. This natural process is very similar to a composting process - temperatures can reach up to 160 degrees. This not only kills latent weed seeds, fungus, insects and disease, but also ages the materials so it will have a more uniform and darker appearance.
 
Another benefit of our process is that the fines in the mulch are ready to add nutritional value to the soil sooner. Our natural heat sterilization process is done as a normal part of our operations. We believe that you would be hard pressed to find other suppliers in this market that would routinely go to this level of trouble, time and effort.
 
Secondly, we produce and sell local-mulch only. The materials that we use only come from our local area - generally speaking within 20 miles. The wood in question is very far away. Therefore, there is no reasonable chance of getting such contaminated wood on our yard, or in our products. If the referenced report is true, which we doubt, then it would be reasonable that such mulch would end up in the big-box stores, produced by the lowest bidder. We always recommend against using such off-the-shelf mulch, for numerous reasons. We recently wrote, in our monthly newsletter, of problems that developed as a result of using some contaminated bagged mulch.
 
As we repeatedly warn, the key is to always use a reputable and trusted supplier.