Chandra Clarke

The lawn as we know it is a fairly recent invention. You can find its origins in the manicured estates of the European aristocracy. Devoting acres of land to high maintenance grass was a way to flaunt your wealth. It meant you had so much land that you could take some out of crop production and devote it entirely to being decorative. And further, that you had the staff to maintain it to exacting standards.

The standard suburban turf grass lawn — green, neat, tidy — is still a status symbol. It implies that the owner is comfortably middle class or higher. It still requires staff to maintain it too: many a weekend is devoted to trimming, weeding, rolling, spraying, aerating, raking, watering, and fertilizing. If you are especially wealthy, you can afford specialized equipment for the job, or you can have a service in to all this work for you.

The lawn as a concept is so ubiquitous that some 128,000 square kilometres is devoted to it in the USA. According to NASA, that’s three times more acres of lawns than irrigated corn. 

Here’s the thing, though: from an ecological standpoint, that green lawn is a desert. Its also a huge contributor to carbon emissions. 

Let’s address the first point. We clip our lawns very short, so they don’t provide a decent habitat for anything but the smallest of ground dwelling insects. We’re careful to roll everything flat and fill in holes, so nothing dares burrow. We spray for “weeds” and eliminate any flowers for pollinators. We also don’t fancy bugs very much, so we kill grubs and other critters with pesticides.  So from a wildlife point of view, that’s tens of thousands of square kilometres that are essentially no longer habitable or food bearing.

As for carbon emissions, we can look at direct and indirect production. Most of us still use gas lawnmowers (and gas-powered weedwhackers and leaf blowers), which are highly inefficient. The US Environmental Protection agency (EPA) estimates that hour-for-hour, gas-powered lawn mowers produce 11 times as much pollution as a new car. The government of Canada suggests that a single lawn mower produces 48 kilograms of greenhouse gas in a season.

Oh, and they’re noisy and smelly!

Meanwhile, think of all the emissions generated to bring you: grass seed, weed killer, bug killer, and all the tools and machinery you use. While we’re at it, let’s think about how wasteful it is for every single household to have a dedicated lawn mowing machine. A number of lawnmower maintenance sites suggest that the average lawnmower is used for about 60 hours per year. That means it just sits around in your garage for 99.4% of the year.

Lawns are also water hogs. Landscape irrigation (lawn watering) is estimated to account for nearly 1/3 of residential water use, or 27 billion litres every day (EPA). 

Finally, all those lawn chemicals contribute to waterway pollution and fertilizer run-off, which creates algae blooms that kill wildlife.

So, there’s very little to love about lawns. 

All of that said, it’s easy to see why we still have them. They’re ‘normal’ to us, because we grew up with them. Kids and dogs like playing on them. And in areas where certain insects — like ticks, for instance — are problematic and bring disease, there are good reasons for keeping ‘nature’ at arms length. Plus, we like imposing order on our surroundings. 

How to make our lawns ‘greener’

Fortunately, there are a lot of easy fixes, many of which involve *less* work than what you’re doing.

• If you’re constrained by local bylaws or a homeowners association, and can’t (easily) change the composition of your lawn, you can still immediately decarbonize by switching to electric mowers and tools. The latest generation of tools have enough power and torque to handle most lawns and there are even decent electric riding lawnmower options now. You could also shop around for a ‘green’ lawn service that uses electric machines. If you have a small lawn, you could also just use a reel mower. 
• On that note, you can call around to your local lawn service companies and ask if they use electric equipment (even if you already know they don’t). If they feel they’re losing potential customers by using fossil fuels, they might start decarbonizing their fleets.
• You can reduce or eliminate your fertilizer needs by adding nitrogen fixing plants to your lawn. Clover, for example, used to be standard in lawns until weed management chemicals killed them off. 
• Speaking of which, consider accepting imperfection, and give the weed killers a miss. If you must control weeds, switch to corn gluten application in the spring to stop weeds from sprouting in the first place. 
• Get your lawn tested and investigate what local mycorrhizal fungi you should add to your lawn. These fungi have a symbiotic relationship with certain plant roots, and help plants absorb phosphorous, potassium, calcium, copper, and iron. They also help with water uptake.
• You can reduce or eliminate your water bill by setting up rain barrels to catch rain water and save it for dry days. You can also reduce evaporation by watering very early in the morning or late at night when it’s cooler. More water gets to the plants this way.
• Other water saving options include setting up ‘rain gardens’ and ‘grey water systems.’ A rain garden uses roof run-off and rain water to nourish water loving plants like lilies and reeds. Always use what’s native to your region. A grey water system reuses water from things like showers and sinks. Be sure you’re using environmentally-friendly soaps and not dumping anything bad down the drain.
• You can also just let your grass go brown in peak summer heat. Grasses have a natural dormancy cycle they use to conserve nutrients, and they can generally stay that way for as much as a month. 
• If you have looser local regulations, consider over seeding with a regionally-appropriate “low mow” or “no mow” seed mixture. These produce short grasses and flowers that need only a few lawnmower passes per year, or sometimes none at all.
• You can reduce the total area of lawn you need to mow by planting native shrubs and trees.
• You can also convert sections of your lawn to native flower gardens. Or go all out and convert everything! It doesn’t have to be a wild meadow – it’s possible to have an orderly wildflower garden if that suits you more. 
• Finally, you might be able to get past local regulations by converting everything to food production. While this isn’t ideal from an ecology point of view, it does save on greenhouse emissions, and you get produce out of it, which will help you save on your grocery bill.
• For the love of all that is holy, do not ‘fix’ the problem of lawns by paving it over or installing fake grass. Concrete production produces CO2, and paving everything contributes to flooding because rainwater can’t just soak away into the ground but must travel over cement. Fake grass is essentially plastic, which is terrible for the environment in all kinds of ways. 

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

Jane Goodall

In an earlier section, we talked about how about 100 companies are responsible for most of the emissions being released right now. We also noted that we as consumers don’t really buy from them directly. So how do we fight back at the individual level? How can we curb emissions and cut other kinds of pollution?

By drying up the market for the products that these companies backstop. Voting with your wallet.

Again, I’m not talking about temporary boycotts. Nor am I talking about standing around in the grocery store debating the morality of choosing Brand A over Brand B while the kids are bugging you for chocolate bars or plushies. 

What I’m suggesting is a longer term solution and a systematic approach, whereby you take a look at one purchasing habit at a time, fix it, and then move on to the next habit. 

Let’s use an example. Consider this: Every toothbrush you’ve ever used in your life is almost certainly still around. 

Numbers vary, depending on the conditions and type of plastic, but most figures suggest that it takes hundreds of years for plastic to decompose. (And mostly it seems to go into smaller and smaller bits of plastic.)

Kind of a scary thought, yes? It gets worse if you start doing some math. 

Let’s say the average person changes out his toothbrush once a year. Now consider a small city with 1,000,000 people in it. That means one city generates a million used toothbrushes every… single… year.  

Thus, we’re creating mountains of used toothbrushes that will still be around in ~450 years.

And of course, since you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to tell you that most plastics come from fossil fuels, and that fossil fuels are responsible for CO2 emissions, air pollution, and that oil spills are incredibly devastating. 

So, is there a perfect, zero-impact replacement for plastic toothbrushes?

No. Not yet anyway. But there are products that are arguably better. 

And indeed, that’s the case with nearly everything we’ll look at in the coming sections. 

Nothing proposed will be perfect, and there’s probably no such thing as zero-impact. Given the size of the human population, the law of big numbers will mean that everything we do will have outsized effects on our planet.

But we no longer have the luxury of waiting for heaven-sent solutions. We have to start moving everything we do to at least less bad right now while en route to those solutions that are sustainable or regenerative.  

We’ll start with some of the biggest impact items in your household. One will be obvious, and you’ve probably been thinking about it already. The other might surprise you. 

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

— Edmund Burke.

In previous sections, we’ve talked about how we desperately need systemic changes, and in particular changes in the way corporations do business.

And it’s absolutely correct to focus on the damage large companies have done to our planet. One only has to look at the damage caused by state oil company Pemex, which managed to set the freaking’ ocean on fire, to see that there’s a problem.

But it’s not just corporations — small- to medium-sized businesses have environmental impacts too.

And what are businesses, but organizations made up of people? People like you and me?

Sure, you might not be a CEO, or in the C-Suite at all, or even at the middle-management level. But even if you’re just a cog in the proverbial machine, you do have a voice. And it’s time we all started using our voices at work.

Here are some ideas for using yours. Remember to frame your suggestions or push for changes in a way that demonstrates the benefits to the organization:

• Sit down with a pencil and paper (or your phone, or whatever) and start thinking objectively about how you do your job. Are there ways to make it cleaner and greener? (For example, if you are a courier, are you shutting down your vehicle when you make a delivery or are you leaving it to idle? What would happen if turning it off was company policy? How much pollution would that remove from the equation? How much would it save the company in fuel costs?)
• Think too, about your section, unit, division, department, or whatever they’re called in your company. Maybe your specific job is pretty clean and green, but what about the bigger picture?
• What consumables is your organization constantly having to reorder? Could they be replaced with reusables? Or done away with completely?
• What happens to stuff that doesn’t get sold at your retail job? Does it get destroyed? Is it thrown in the dumpster? Can you push to have the stuff donated? Can you tally up how much the company is wasting and send a report up the chain?
• Are you in charge of ordering supplies? Can you influence what gets purchased? Can you push for more ecofriendly versions of the things you use regularly?
• What processes routinely produce a lot of waste in your company? Can you find a way to fix the process so it generates less waste in the first place? Can you find a way to reuse or recycle that waste?
• What’s energy use like where you work? Are people constantly leaving monitors and lights on? Leaving windows open while the heat is on? What solutions can you propose at the next staff meeting that would be more efficient and save the company money? Typically, posting signs around the office doesn’t work, but maybe having, for instance, the IT department implement a computer network power saving policy that shuts things down automatically might.

So, we’ve covered some basic actions we can take to improve things. These are generally safe to do, and might even be good for your career if you’ve done it in such a way as to demonstrate initiative and a willingness to help the company’s bottom line.

What about bad companies?

But what if you’re working for a company that is genuinely a bad actor rather than being merely careless? You know the kind: flouting regulations, dumping illegally, not looking after the health and safety of its workers or its community. Or even just in an industry that’s been proven to be bad for people or the planet, even if they’re theoretically doing everything “by the book?” (Remember that old adage: Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s right.)

What you do in these cases largely depends on your financial situation, your conscience, what legal protections you have and so on.

If it’s safe for you to do so — that is, you believe you’re in a position to push for change without losing your job and imperiling your family in the process, you could make those suggestions. (Just remember that businesses might demand loyalty, but rarely give it back, so assume you’re not truly secure).

If it’s not safe for you do so, then your priority should be to find a way to leave the job. Yes, leave it. You don’t have to be part of the problem. (And if you’re a young person just joining the workplace, don’t sign up to work for bad actors or industries in the first place.)

That might mean sacrificing evenings to attend night school and reskill; or if you already have transferable skills, start applying for new jobs; and getting your finances in order so you won’t be bankrupted (which is just a good idea anyway) by a change in, or complete loss of salary.

In other words, find a way to get off the treadmill that forces you to accept a status quo that is endangering us all.

Pulling in big bucks and being able to afford that house or nicer car won’t help you when your town sets temperature records and then burns to the ground, or when there are food shortages because you have a record-setting plague of mice.

And while I would never suggest that anyone break the law, I will say that whistleblowers are key to getting corporations and systems to reform. Fortunately, for anyone contemplating blowing a whistle on the activities of their organization, there are lots of articles freely available online on how to do so and protect yourself.

There are even search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t track your activities, or special browsers like Tor, which helps you stay anonymous online. And there are a lot of news organizations that have anonymous tip boxes available too.

As long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

― John Dewey

Whether you’re a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist or an ardent socialist, it’s fair to say that large businesses – multinational corporations especially – have incredible power. It’s also fair to say that that power isn’t always used for the greater good.

John Bunzl and Nick Duffell, writing in The Simpol Solution, suggest that we are in the grip of what they call “destructive global competition” or DGC. As long as there is one jurisdiction that ‘competes’ by offering low corporate tax rates, lax environmental regulations, soft labour laws, or some other incentive for corporations, then all the other jurisdictions have to do something similar. Otherwise, corporations move jobs elsewhere. No jobs results in no votes for politicians, and of course, unemployment for the citizen. 

DGC is why even progressive-leaning political parties seem to promote the status quo. They can only push so hard in this environment, before losing votes and thus losing the power to change things. 

This must change. It is completely unsustainable, no matter what timeline we consider. 

So what can we do? As a consumer, we’re often told we can punish companies by boycotting their products. That is still true in certain industries, especially for small- to medium-sized businesses, if you can get enough people on board for a boycott. I’m sure you can think of many examples where public outcry and a drop in sales reversed an announced policy or changed a specific company practice. 

It’s not terribly effective in the long term, however, as public attention is fickle. Neither is it much of a bother for large or multinational corporations. Consider The Procter & Gamble Company, which owns something like 65 different brands, with dozens of individual products under each brand line. You could boycott one brand of laundry detergent in favour of another, only to discover, once you read the label carefully, that they’re both owned by P&G. So not only is it hard to avoid that company’s products in the first place, they have so many that a temporary drop in sales for one brand won’t hurt them much.

Boycotts are also only truly available to the privileged: those who have the time and the money to be able to make considered purchases. A single mother working two part-time jobs, and who is reliant on public transit to get groceries, doesn’t have nearly as many choices as a double-income family with two personal vehicles. So while you may be able to avoid one corporation’s products completely should you want to, that corporation is still able to make millions of dollars from other consumers. Thus, we need to do more than just temporarily avoid a product for a while.

How to Take Action:

1. Complain directly to that company’s customer service channel. A drop in sales can be attributed to too many other things: a dud advertising campaign, a new competitor, a sudden price sensitivity, the end of a trend. If you’re going to stop buying a company’s product, you have to let them know why. (Note: Don’t be rude to the customer service rep for any reason. They’re just doing their job.) In a blog post, grocery store chain owner Galen Weston once noted that the most angry emails they’d ever received was when they started wrapping their cucumbers in plastic. A flood of complaints does get attention.
2. Publicly call the company out on social media. Not only is it harder for a company to ignore something being done publicly, but other people will see you taking a company to task, and might be encouraged to avoid the product and voice their displeasure as well.
3. Do both of the above even if you have never bought the product and don’t intend to. For example, I never buy soda, but I have complained to soda manufacturers about their continued use of plastic o-rings to distribute their products. If you see something, say something.
4. Bring the problem to the attention of a larger organization or media outlet, too. For example, it wasn’t widely known that retail clothing stores were actively destroying and dumping millions of unsold items, until it came to the attention of the media and advocacy groups. Now there’s considerable pressure against these “fast fashion” practices. 
5. Rethink your investments. If you are fortunate enough to have a retirement fund, have a hard look at where you’re invested. There’s no point in avoiding a company’s products if you’re actively supporting their current stock market valuation with your mutual funds!  Many brokerages and banks now offer “ethical portfolios,” and while there’s a lot of greenwashing out there, these are worth a look. Talk to your advisor about establishing an investment policy.
6. Push an investment entity to divest. When big investors, like the Vatican, for example, announce they’re no longer going to invest in anything related to fossil fuels, you can bet it makes a difference. Pick a bank, a mutual fund, a private equity firm, your government’s pension plan, and tell them to divest themselves of environmentally-destructive companies.
7. Do the same to your insurance company. Big investments come with big risks, which big insurance companies underwrite. There have been a number of successful campaigns to pressure insurance firms into declining to insure things like pipelines. 
8. Support eco and social justice lawsuits. Individuals don’t have the resources to fight corporations in court, but non governmental organizations (NGOs) do, especially if you donate to their legal funds.
9. Finally, rather than boycotting, which is temporarily abstaining from purchase, permanently and proactively switch to ecofriendly products and services. Indeed, we’ll talk about how to do just that in later posts.