Environmentalist at Home: Eco-Friendly Lawn Care

Few things are more evocative of rural and suburban residential America than the lawn. From the winter green lawns of Massachusetts to the palmettos lawns of the Carolinas to the Legend Grass lawns of Minnesota and Wisconsin, some acreage of tended grass surrounds the homes of millions of people across the nation. American lawns exhibit a tremendous variety of sizes, shapes, grass species, and exist for a variety of purposes. People use lawns for recreation and social events, to give pets a place to roam, and even for the simple contemplative pleasure of meditating over grass blades. During the mid 20 th Century and the advent of large-scale suburbanization, the lawn become so ubiquitous in residential America as to have been ingrained in today’s national psyche.

However, lawns are not simply green tracts of heritage. They are demanding forces that shape the domestic routines for millions of American and can even serve as harbingers for new seasons. Lawn mower growls signal spring. Sprinkler spritzes suggest summer. Tracing its entomological lineage from the Celtic word launde, meaning a natural glade or heath, modern lawns seem to summarize man’s negotiation of the pristine appeal of nature and a ritualized desire to shape, form, and domesticate property.

Despite their apparent natural beauty and undisputed practicality, lawns have become the source of numerous environmental concerns. An abundance of chemical pesticides and herbicides pollute area fields, streams, ponds, and underground water tables. Fertilizer run-off has been particularly detrimental to fresh water eco-systems by inducing rapid algae growth. This photosynthetic organism ravenously devours the oxygen dissolved in the water rendering the habitat barren of other aquatic plant and animal life. Excessive lawn irrigation contributes to a severe waste of water supplies. Aging gasoline lawnmowers emit thousands of pounds of hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and other pollutants into the air each year. Furthermore, many Americans have attempted to seed lawns in lands with intolerable soil pH levels or on hills or in sharp crevices with topography incompatible with lawns. These desperate attempts at keeping lawns often consist of the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides with little regard to the detrimental impact such chemicals can have for surrounding eco-systems.

This section will illustrate the different ways in which your lawn and lawn care routine could harm the environment while offering solutions that will allow your lawn to exist harmoniously within its surrounding eco-system while saving you money. For instance, did you know that by irrigating your lawn at dawn and dusk in the summer months you could prevent a large degree of wasteful water evaporation? Did you know that to eliminate almost all parasitical lawn weeds, you need mow your lawn only to the level of 3.5 inches? Adherence to a few simple guidelines concerning fertilization, pesticides and herbicides, mowing, irrigation, and soil and land knowledge can help you foster a healthy lawn with an eco-friendly conscious.

Chemical Fertilizers: Insidious Pollutants

Lawn care begins in the dirt. More specifically, lawn care begins with a comprehensive examination of soil chemical composition and an inventory of the nutrients available for a potential or existing lawn. To supplement the earth’s natural minerals, most lawn owners resort to the use of fertilizers. Like small-scale gardeners and large-scale farmers, a lawn owner’s choice of fertilizer holds serious consequences for the surrounding acres, area streams, and groundwater tables.

Simply, fertilizers are mixtures of minerals and nutrients that assist plants in converting starches into sugar. Over the thirty or so years, a raging polemic has divided lawn owners over the use of artificial and natural fertilizers. Some lawn owners attest to the drastic successes they have achieved through the use of artificial, or chemical fertilizers, while other owners claim to have achieved the best results with natural organic fertilizer supplements. By federal law, all chemical and organic fertilizers consist principally of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (or potash.) Smaller amounts of magnesium, iron, calcium, boron, zinc, manganese, and sulfur supplement this mixture. The differences between organic and chemical fertilizers arise both in the relative proportions of these chemicals, the processes by which each individual element is derived, and between the number of excess elements present in each type. Chemical fertilizers consist of complex chemical compounds including the universal nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium nutrients but also integrate a number laboratory derived secondary compounds such as ammonium, potassium sulfate, superphosphate, and soda of nitrate. In contrast, organic fertilizers consist only of the remains or by-products of a living organism. In her essay, “Organic Fertilizers,” Diane Relf sites cottonseed meal, blood meal, fish emulsion, manure and sewage sludge as examples of organic fertilizers.

While various factions of green thumbs debate the virtues and drawbacks of chemical and organic fertilizers, environmentalists have sided unanimously with the organic products, citing numerous studies and statistics attesting to the dangers of soil and water pollution stemming from chemical fertilizers. Specifically, studies have shown that excess nitrates from water-soluble nitrogen chemical fertilizers can seep through the soil to contaminate groundwater tables. Furthermore, when decomposed in soil, chemical fertilizer superphosphates can turn to sulfuric acid, an extremely poisonous compound that can burn plant tissue and human flesh. The sustained presence of these chemicals in the soil long into a lawn’s life cycle has caused sustained concern not only for environmentalists but also for parents of young children, pet owners, and bird and wildlife aficionados.

Organic fertilizers hold decisively fewer consequences for lawn ecology and can often directly eliminate specific soil deficiencies (For more information, see Extremely Green’s “Organic Fertilizer Guide”.) However, the most environmentally sound efforts to keep a healthy lawn need not originate in fifty pound shrink wrapped bags. By composting dead tree leaves and by leaving grass clippings among standing grass blades, anyone can nourish their lawn without the cost or side effects of using commercially produced fertilizers. This is one example out of many wherein a lawn owner can utilize natural ecological processes to foster a healthy, biological friendly landscape.

Healthy Lawns by Herbicide? The Case Against Chemical Pesticides, Herbicides, and Fungicides.

In 1997, the US Geological Survey discovered the 95% of stream samples contained at least one pesticide (“The Green Seal Report.”) From Rachel Carson’s publication of Silent Spring, to the folk music of Joni Mitchell, to present day laboratory sample studies, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides have provoked a tremendous amount of controversy in the environmental, agricultural, and commercial communities. Household lawns have become a significant forum for this debate. Particularly, the use of herbicide weed killers containing arsenate of lead, sodium arsenate, arsenic acid, ammonium, thicyante, and copper sulfate has been cited for killing extensive non-weed vegetation, as well as deer, rabbits, and domestic livestock. Furthermore, the over-use of such chemicals on pests, weeds, and fungi has had comparable adverse effect to the results of an overly distributed vaccine. Specifically, the pests have adapted swiftly over successive generations to breed new insects, viruses, bacteria, and fungi resistant not only to chemical treatments but also natural plant defense mechanisms. Even more discouraging, pesticide seepage has been shown to alter drastically soil composition and structure to encourage unnatural levels of fertility. In some cases, unnaturally fertile lands promote the rapid growth of herbicide resistant weeds and in cases of land made unnaturally unfertile, the conversion of the soil into barren dirt.

The repercussions of chemical pesticide lawn care range further than surrounding landscape. Consider some of the following facts published by the company Echochem.

• A number of Canadian municipalities have banned or severely restricted the use of lawn-care pesticides. The Province of Quebec recently set “the highest standards in North America to decrease exposure to pesticides” when it prohibited some commonly used lawn care pesticides (including 2,4-D and MCPP) from use on public lawns. These pesticides will be prohibited from use on private and commercial lawns in 2006.

• Pesticides are composed of active ingredients and inert ingredients. Some inert ingredients may be more toxic than active ingredients and can comprise 90 to 95 percent of the product. Some inert ingredients are suspected carcinogens, while others have been linked to central nervous system disorders, liver and kidney damage, birth defects, and some short-term health effects.

• Increased odds of childhood leukemia, brain cancer and soft tissue sarcoma have been associated with children living in households where pesticides are used.10 Other childhood malignancies associated with pesticide exposures include neuroblastoma, Wilms’ tumor, Ewing’s sarcoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and cancers of the brain, colorectum, and testes.

• Toxicology and Industrial Health published a study showing that the natural mix of chemical pesticides and fertilizers – in concentrations mirroring levels found in groundwater – can significantly affect immune and endocrine systems as well as neurological health.

• Mounting evidence indicates that when costs of cleanup of polluted water, replacement of eroded soils and health care costs are factored in, the price of organic foods are probably the same, or less, than foods grown with man-made chemicals...

Obviously, the stakes of pesticide lawn care can be more significant than lush grass color and seasonal durability.

As with fertilizers, one solution to problems of chemical pesticides is the use of organically derived pathogen inhibitors. Robert Bellinger, the Extension Pesticide Coordinator at Clemson University defines organic pesticides as those that “come from natural resources.” In his report, “Organic Pesticides and Biopesticides,” Bellinger describes the positive attributes of organic pesticides and biopesticides, another type of pesticide exploiting biological processes to achieve specific results. Comprised either of naturally occurring microchemicals such as insect pheromones or microbial organisms such as genetically altered bacteria, biopesticides according to Bellinger:

• Have a narrow target range and a very specific mode of action;
• Are slow acting;
• Have relatively critical application times;
• Suppress, rather than eliminate, a pest population;
• Have limited field persistence and a short shelf life;
• Are safer to humans and the environment than conventional pesticides;
• Present no residue problems.

While biopesticides represent the cutting edge of biological research, many lawn owners have employed less scientific ingenuity to develop eco-friendly household solutions to weed and pest problems. A steamed mixture of 1 cup of salt, 1 gallon of vinegar, and a few drops of detergent can eliminate poison ivy. A concoction of boiling water and peppermint soap can take care of gnats. Sugar and borax can stifle ant colonies. For more homegrown lawn care remedies see Jill Slater’s article, “Homemade Bug and Fungus Remedies”. With the increasing dissemination of such clever techniques and the scientific development of organic and biological pesticides, lawn owners concerned with the environment should have the resources required to minimize or eliminate the use of chemical pesticides.

By far the most recognizable element of lawn care, lawn mowing constitutes a weekly summer chore for millions of Americans each year. Assuming that the reader cuts his or her own lawn, there are a number of environmental considerations that should factor in choosing a lawn mower. Particularly, lawn owners should know that aging gasoline mowers emit thousands of tons of pollutants into the air every year. Even new, optimally functional gasoline lawn mowers release tremendous amounts of smog-causing pollutants into the atmosphere.

As an alternative to gasoline mowers, consider the purchase of an electric lawn mower. Though more typically more expensive initially (the Green Seal Report showed that a new electric mower costs approximately $340 versus $160 for a comparable gasoline mower), reports have shown that after 10 years of use, electric mowers often cost less than half the price of gasoline models when factoring in gasoline and oil costs, and maintenance. From an environmental scope, electric mowers have been proven to emit substantially fewer pollutants than their gasoline counterparts. The Green Seal Report concluded that a new electric mower in one year would emit only .00006% of the grams of hydrocarbons, 88% of the grams of C02, and 23% of the grams of Nitrogen Oxide as a gasoline mower.

Despite the electric mower’s comparatively favorable standing to gasoline mowers, there exists for many lawn tenders an ideal alternative, a mower model that releases virtually no pollution and is capable of giving its user some vigorous exercise. Manual reel mowers may strike some people as antiquated, but thousands of Americans have chosen this silent, zero-emissions mower and have been pleased. These compact non-automated machines offer the advantage of containing few moving parts, easy maintenance, and low cost (16” models run between $80 and $250). Reel mowers eliminate the noise and emissions pollution typically associated with lawn mowing and can infuse in a weekly routine numerous cardiovascular benefits. For more information about manual mowers read this informational piece from My-Garden-Supplies.Com or for ordering and pricing information, refer to one of the many reel mower distributors such as Composters.com.

In addition to contributing to air pollution, gasoline lawnmowers and tractors can pose a significant threat to private wells and public water supplies from the spillage that often results while refilling gas tanks. Apart from gasoline being none to healthy in and of itself, in many areas of the country, MTBE (Methyl tertiary-butyl ether) is added to help the fuel to burn cleanlier. MTBE is an oxygenate that has been identified as a health risk and from a public perspective, is most commonly associated with spillage or tank leaks at gas stations. However, significant MTBE contamination of water supplies can result from even very small spills of the type that occur when refilling gasoline powered lawn care equipment.

To minimize the possibility of contaminating personal or public water supplies we would strongly suggest the following:

1. Never, ever refill a gasoline tank near your well.
2. Never refill a gasoline tank near a swale or area that transports storm water.
3. Use a high quality spout on your gas can that allows the flow of gas to be controlled by a valve rather than by simple gravity.
4. Make sure all gaskets on the gas are in place and functional.
5. Use smaller gas cans that are lighter and easier to handle. A full five gallon can weighs more than 30 pounds and can be difficult control when tipping into the tank of the mower, weed whacker or chain saw.

For more information on MTBE please see "Drinking Water Contaminents."

Conclusions: Lawn Alternatives

Despite the best intentions of a lawn owner, the highest degree of soil scrutiny, the most meticulous selection and placement of fertilizer, and the most adept use of pesticides, some times lawns fail. Topographies featuring drastic slopes, rocky ravines, sandy soil, and high pH levels are poor candidates for lawn seeding. If you are unsure of the local soil composition, contact your local county agricultural board to have them type and soil and suggest plans either for a lawn or lawn alternative.

While most Americans prefer the traditional grass lawn, many people have achieved beautiful landscapes through the planting of natural ground covers of low-growing plants which require no mowing. Weaving strands of natural vegetations, ground covers can offer an ideal alternative for property owners who do not possess sufficient soil qualities to grow a lawn, or who are not interested in committing the time and resources to lawn care. Ivies and pachysandra are among the most common ground covers in the northeast but growing in popularity are moss lawns. Despite the fact that if one does an Internet search on moss lawns virtually all of the hits will be on how to get rid of the moss, many people are using moss to create interesting and unique lawnscapes. The enchanting moss yard of one homeowner in Bucks County, Pennsylvania has drawn so much interest that he now does occasional public tours of his property. This is but one example of working with the land, recognizing its limitations as well as its potential, and it serves well to illustrate the possibilities that exist when we consider all of the options.

Bibliography and Links

Bellinger, Robert. “Organic Pesticides and Biopesticides.”

"Health Risks Associated with Herbicides and Pesticides.” Echochem: An Earth Friendly Company.

“Organic Fertilizers and Soil Amendment Guide.”

Owen, Marion. “Why Organic Fertilizers and Organic Gardening are Darn Good Ideas.”

Relf, Diane. The Virginia Gardner Handbook. “Organic Fertilizers.”

"The Green Seal Report". Green Seal Environmental Partners.