12/15/2024
SUSTAINABILITY SUNDAY
Lawns an Eco Disaster?
It’s no secret that the ‘ol American lawn is not the sustainable choice for living amongst nature. What was one an identifier for families living the American dream is now recognized as a contributor to climate change and environmental neglect.
To start:
* Irrigation & Water usage
* Fertilizers and pesticides
* Air pollution from lawn equipment
* Lack of Biodiversity
* Stormwater runoff from compacted soil
* Higher Carbon footprint
Are all issues concerning the maintained lawn.
While grass does remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trap dust, lawns can still have many negative environmental impacts.
The problem with lawns:
Most lawn equipment is gasoline powered (mainly two and four stroke engines) and to fuel this equipment, it takes about 800 million gallons of gasoline annually, with 17 millions additional gallons spilled in the process. In two stroke engines, about 30 percent of the fuel doesn’t combust completely resulting in toxic gases released into the air. So much more about this online, but essentially, the emissions from crappy lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and even other two-stroke vehicles (scooters, etc) is pretty bad.
Synthetic fertilizers are used en masse to achieve lush green lawns, about 3 millions tons a year. The manufacturing of these chemicals alone is an eco disaster, and their affect on lawns and surrounding environments post application aren’t any better. For every ton of nitrogen created to make fertilizers, four or five tons of carbon are released into the atmosphere. This being said, the lawn doesn’t even need, nor can hold, this amount of nitrogen, so the soil will then turn this nitrogen into nitrous oxide gas, a greenhouse gas that has 300 times thereat-trapping ability of CO2.
Beyond this, the fertilizers can run off into local bodies of water, and eventually contribute and lead to waterways turning into “dead zones” via toxic algae blooms.
(Continued in comments)
