Blog - 7/15/07 - Grass
Lawns are where families play, picnic and relax. Over the past fifty years, the plush green lawn has become the pride of suburban America. From 2000 to 2004 93% of US metropolitan growth occurred in the suburbs, and most of those new suburbanites have lawns. Lawns are damaging to the environment because of pesticides, water usage, and emissions and noise pollution caused by lawn maintenance equipment. Lawns are also a burden to maintain.
Pesticides
With the aid of sophisticated marketing strategies backed by millions of dollars in advertising, the lawn care and pesticide industry has successfully created the desire for “the perfect lawn”. More importantly, the industry has succeeded in convincing many Americans that to have a green and healthy lawn, one needs to use an arsenal of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.
The desire for the perfect lawn is leading millions of households across the nation to expose their children, pets, and water supplies to toxic pesticides that threaten public health and the environment.
While the amount of pesticides used in agriculture, industry, commercial and government sectors has decreased over the past twenty years, the use of residential lawn and garden pesticides is on the rise. It is the one sector of the pesticides market that is growing.
At least 78 million American households blanket their yards with pesticides in search of the suburban emerald dream lawn. TruGreen ChemLawn is the largest lawn care provider in the United States serving more than 3.4 million households and annually generating more than $1.3 billion in income. TruGreen ChemLawn contributes to the yearly application of more than 70 million pounds of pesticides on some of America’s 30 million acres of lawns. The amount of pesticides applied is significant; the rate of pesticides used on lawns is on average ten times more per acre than what is used on agricultural land.
Pesticides are often tracked indoors by pets and shoes. Without exposure to sunlight or rain, lawn pesticides will last longer when they are tracked inside. Children are especially vulnerable to pesticides. Their normal activities include playing on floors and on grass where pesticides accumulate, and they routinely put unwashed hands or other objects in their mouths. In addition, their nervous, respiratory, reproductive and immune systems are not yet fully developed and may be adversely affected by the pesticides.
Exposure to pesticides has been linked to serious human health problems including several types of cancer (lymphoma, leukemia, bladder cancer), birth defects, neurological disorders, reproductive disorders, liver damage, kidney damage, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headaches and learning disabilities. A University of Southern California study showed that children whose parents used garden pesticides were 6.5 times more likely to develop leukemia.
The pesticides are typically applied to lawns by landscapers who frequently do not strictly observe the guidelines for quantities to be applied and who tend to exceed the recommended amounts in order to “do a really good job”. They also tend to disregard safety procedures designed to protect them when applying the chemicals. Federal regulations concerning the marketing and use of pesticides on lawns do little to protect consumers.
There are now organic-based lawn care products and services available to suburban lawn owners who insist on having nice looking lawns. NaturaLawn is one of them.
Lawn Maintenance Equipment Pollution
The lawn mower, weed whacker, leaf blower, and edger are all examples of small engines that are used to mow and maintain America’s lawns. Together they contribute a lot of air pollution. Small engines are largely uncontrolled and their carbon-dioxide emissions, combined with escaping fuel vapors and leaking oil, make them remarkably dirty machines for their size. These small engines also require storage space so you either have to keep them in the garage (your car will no longer fit in your garage) or you have to put a shed on the lawn (and maintain the shed too).
With reel mowers (the old-fashioned manual push lawn mower) you can get a little exercise and avoid fouling the neighborhood with noise and exhaust pollution. Sales of reel mowers by the American Lawn Mower Co. of Shelbyville, Indiana, reached 100,000 last year, a 47% increase over 1986. Average price: less than $100, in contrast to $250 or more for motorized models.
When you finally get time to play, picnic and relax on your lawn, you often get treated to the loud, disturbing, displeasing noise created by a gas powered internal combustion engine—noise pollution. It’s the landscaping crew using lawn maintenance equipment to maintain the neighbor’s lawn next door or across the street. Annoying, isn’t it?
Watering Lawns
30% of water consumed on the East Coast goes to watering lawns; 60% on the West Coast. With recent drought conditions and increasing demands on limited water supplies the need to conserve water has become a major issue for many communities. Las Vegas residents are encouraged to abandon the unnatural practice of growing grass in a desert and let native plants re-establish themselves. Some have paved over their lawns and painted the concrete green.
The Burden of Lawn Maintenance
When people are asked, “Why would you want to leave the city and move to the suburbs?” many of them respond, “Grass.” So you move to the suburbs and you get your grass, but you quickly find out that you have to spend one to three hours per week maintaining your grass. This can be very tiresome. The recent suburbanites trend is to hire a landscaper which costs $25 to $50 per cut plus much more for fall and spring cleans. One solution is to sell your home in the suburbs and move to an apartment building in a city. City parks enable city dwellers to share the use of the grass and the nice thing is that someone else is maintaining the grass.
Absurd Lawn Behavior
Some people spend an excessive amount of time and money maintaining their lawns. These are usually the same people that don’t like it when others step on their grass. Then there are the neighbors that get aggressive with fellow neighbors who don’t maintain their lawns well. Their fear is that a poorly kept lawn on the block will drive down property values. Then there is the unspoken grass competition on the block. Who has the nicest lawn on your block? The truth is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.