{"id":5188,"date":"2018-05-28T18:28:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T23:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=5188"},"modified":"2018-05-28T18:28:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T23:28:47","slug":"how-green-is-my-lawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=5188","title":{"rendered":"How green is my lawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, what exactly is it we\u2019re trying to do?<\/h3>\n

I recently moved from a semi-tiny apartment<\/a> to a house (don’t ask). Included in the package is a relatively small lawn. Despite its smallness, it bothers me for at least two reasons. The first is personal; I grew up in a pretty large and definitely suburban house with a typically large lawn. It was before the days of lawn services, so it fell to my teenage self to mow the acre of really hilly and only sometimes green expanse. That, by the way, is one of the (many) reasons I vowed to never become a dweller in the supposedly idyllic ‘burbs.<\/p>\n

I know many will disagree with this aversion, but let me have my rant.<\/p>\n

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Image credit: Eric Allix Rogers\/Flickr<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

My second distaste for lawns came about as I became increasingly (and I hope not obnoxiously) a proselytizing environmentalist.<\/p>\n

In my classes, as I describe the goals of sustainability, starting from the 3Rs<\/a>\u00a0through the triple bottom line<\/a>\u00a0and beyond, I use lawn mowing and lawns as an example. I first show a picture of a lawn mower and ask the class how, if they were tasked with making it greener, they would go about it. I get the obvious answers regarding fuel efficiency and recycled materials.<\/p>\n

But then I push them further and, usually with some prodding, get them to think about lawns themselves rather than lawn mowers. I do this by asking them to take a step back and question what it is we’re really trying to do. A pedagogical goal of\u00a0 mine is getting my students to question assumptions and thereby arrive at more sustainable solutions. So, the answer, in this case, is that we are trying to create landscapes around our buildings. But, I ask them, are lawns the only or best way to go about this?<\/p>\n

Because we take lawns for granted,\u00a0they often seem to be the only approach. That means it takes a conceptual leap to get past traditional lawns.<\/p>\n

So the question becomes not how to make a more environmental lawnmower, but how to landscape more environmentally. Lawns are nice for picnics, Frisbees and dogs (or dogs catching Frisbees while devouring our picnics). But that doesn’t justify surrounding our houses or, even more egregiously, suburban office buildings with innumerable acres of non-indigenous (virtually all lawn grasses are not native to North America), unnecessary and – here’s the big point – resource intensive artificial carpets.<\/p>\n

This whole topic came to mind the other day when the blog Earther posted \u201cLawns Are an Ecological Disaster.<\/a>\u201d The article provided supporting data for what I\u2019d been saying for years:<\/p>\n