In the past few years, I’ve tried a few initiatives to spread awareness about the harmful effects of the typical American lawn and encourage people to use more sustainable practices or do away with their lawns all together. Unfortunately, life happened and those initiatives met a dead end… and those initiatives were met with people in the community who were very defensive. Few were receptive (although at the time, the initiatives were targeting a very wealthy, suburban neighborhood community which was likely filled with lawn fanatics).
Really quite discouraging but this morning, I yet again woke up to the sound of landscaping machinery. Ah!!!! A rage. Got to say this is the equivalent of me flying into a rage. I just can’t fathom how we as a society have developed to socially accept and praise this practice that destroys our biodiversity, depletes our water, poisons our environment, AND sounds like constant construction in the warmer months.
Invigorated by my rage, I’m going to tackle lawns again… so far, the plan this time is just to research, educate myself, compile the research, and post and share facts facts facts. I think I will be focusing on environment (biodiversity, water), air pollution, and noise pollution. Both air and noise pollution will discuss health effects on the landscapers & community.
The first study I have found this morning is this one from the EPA which analyzes the three most popular leaf blowers from Home Depot at the time (2005).
Some aspects about conventional landscaping I hope to look into this summer are the health insurance of landscapers & their rates of lung disease + hours of landscaping noise on average in the suburbs vs city (Atlanta, Georgia). People seem to totally ignore the horrible health effects that the landscaping business must have on their workers. A quick Google search yielded me no information on this subject.
Have got to head out now so readers… if you’ve got a lawn yourself, PLEASE look into how much water, fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides a conventional lawn uses and consider converting it to a clover lawn or just seed a bunch of wildflowers. We’re in the midst of the 6th Great Extinction, caused by humans, and this is no time to be holding on to old-fashioned standards of landscaping. If you’re in an HOA regulated neighborhood, I send you my condolences.
Some other updates, I’d been meaning to have a main part of this journal center around my balcony garden which I am very proud of (uwu). Unfortunately, my phone is weighed down with storage and WordPress is not working properly on it (meaning I’ve got to move my garden update photos from my phone to my laptop and just haven’t had the time yet… *sigh*) Clearing out my storage is really a process. I’ve been working on it but there is a lot. People with a new device or cloud storage: please learn from my experience & only save the photos you will really look back on. Reduce is the first step after all… now I have a pile of digital junk to sort through.
Till next time, sofu ooooo (hugs)
#lifeofasofu
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