Sulfonylureas provide highly effective weed control and rotational crop flexibility while breaking down quickly.
Sulfonylureas are no more injurious to nontarget crops than other commercial herbicides.
Sulfonylureas also have minimal impact on groundwater and surface water and have very low impact on birds, fish, insects, and mammals. By replacing older materials with new lower use products that are more environmentally sound and smaller, DuPont has been able to save on packaging and distribution costs, in addition to the manufacturing process itself. Since their introduction in the early 1980s, SU herbicides have helped to reduce the amount of herbicide usage in the world by more than 200 million pounds per year but have helped DuPont's Agricultural Products sales more than quadruple by the mid-1990s. In addition to curtailing the size of the final product DuPont AG has also been able to streamline the production of herbicides, reducing the waste associated with traditional production by 2 to 3 billion kilograms.