10 Reasons Why Your Lawn Isn’t Eco-Friendly

We like our lawns. Well-kept lawns are a status symbol of wealth and leisure. The first-known usage of the word “lawn” dates back to the 14th century. We have had a long love-affair with our green spaces—no wonder we find them so aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Believed to have started in Medieval times as grassed enclosures for communal livestock—lawns became popular with European aristocracy (thus beginning the association with wealth) who had the means—and labor—to take care of them (at that time there were no lawn mowers—the first mower being invented in 1827). Lawns became recreational places in the Tudor and Elizabethan period 1.Did you know that lawn coverage in the U.S. is estimated to be 46.5 million acres? That’s an area larger than the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island combined 2. That spells bad news for the environment, especially when you consider the following facts: In the U.S., 17M gallons of gas and oil are spilled every year from garden equipment. Valdez only spilled 11M gallons. Lawn mowers use 800 million gallons of gasoline each year. An hour’s use of a conventional lawn mower pollutes as much as driving a car 100 miles. 60% -70% of clean drinking water is used to water lawns. Studies show that up to 60% of synthetic nitrogen applied to lawns ends up contaminating ground water. A typical lawn gets 2x more water than it needs to remain healthy. Watering our lawns uses 8,000,000,000 gallons of water each day. An average lawn uses 264 gallons of water EACH HOUR. Run off from lawns adds 20% of water pollution, creating dead zones in our waterways. Not only are lawns a waste of natural resources, lawns are a financial drain for the picky homeowner. American homeowners send $6.4 billion a year making sure that the grass is always greener on their side of the fence. $5.25 billion of that is spent on fossil fuel based fertilizers and $700 million is spent on pesticides2. Luckily, there are ways to make your lawn more eco-friendly. We are going to look at some of those options in a later post. Stay tuned! 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn#History 2. http://landscapeforlife.org/plants/3f.php 3. http://eartheasy.com/grow_lawn_care.htm