Green Options in Caring for Your Lawn

This article is from Glenn at OakleighVermont.com. He writes about sustainability and renewable energy and sells renewable products.

Now that we are into the midsummer mowing season, I figured it is a good time to repost this critical blog entry from last spring. If you haven’t read it, please take a peek and leave a comment!

This may sound unbelievable, but according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) an ordinary gasoline lawn mower can emit as much pollution in one hour as a car driving eight hours! One hour of mowing produces the equivalent of 350 car-miles of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These are the smelly vapors like gasoline that are linked with cancer. Think of the 54 million

Image Credit: Oafbot, Flickr

Americans, mowing their lawns each weekend, their mowers emitting trillions of tons of pollution, and as a result, people inhaling cancer-causing vapors! Incredibly, more gasoline is spilled refueling lawn equipment each year than the 17 million gallons of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska. How much gasoline is consumed by lawn mowers? Americans use 800 million gallons of gas trimming their lawns annually.

So what can we do? We need to think about alternative ways to use lawn space. Can we mow less lawn than we do now and still be happy? Would it make sense to turn lawns into vegetable gardens so the space produces food and requires less mowing? Are there alternatives to mowing with gas-powered mowers?

Often it would make sense to use some lawn space for veggie gardens. Before you do that, be sure you consider light, soil conditions and water availability. More and more people are growing their own and information and advice is easy to find at local garden centers and online. Often people with large lawns find that they can mow less and still have nice landscaping, with more natural landscaping if they mow once or twice a season or let the lawn go back to it’s natural state.

There are also plenty of alternatives to gas mowers. These include reel or rotary “push” mowers and AC corded electric mowers and rechargeable battery electric mowers, which Oakleigh believes are a cut above the rest! Before buying any of these mowers, it is wise to try a test drive, look for reviews online from reputable sources, and at your library in publications such as Consumer Reports.