From lawn addiction to anti-lawn activism

Did you know that: 

• More herbicides per acre are dumped on lawns than on the fields of agribusiness.
•  In the U.S. an estimated 7 million birds are killed yearly by lawn-care pesticides. 
• Phosphorus run-off from lawn fertilizer causes algae blooms that suck oxygen out of lakes, asphyxiating fish.
• A single golf course in Tampa, Florida uses 178,800 gallons of water every day, enough to meet the daily water needs of over 2,200 people.
• On average, 7,600 Americans are injured every year using lawn mowers, about the same number as  firearms.

I learned all that from American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn by Ted Steinberg.  Reviewers have aptly compared it to Fast Food Nation - it’s that well written and that important.

Addicted to green

Who’s to blame for all this? The American love of lawns began with the upperclass emulating the landed gentry of England and spread to middle class neighborhoods after World War II, especially in new communities like Levittown, NY, where residents were encouraged to apply fertilizer a remarkable 5 to 6 times a year because super-green lawns "stamp inhabitants as good neighbors, desirable citizens".  The invention of the power mower and advertising for perfect lawns by industry giant Scotts sealed the new ethic of the American lawn for decades to come.  Proof of Scotts’ marketing power (and the malleability of the American consumer) is the fate of clover.  Where previously it had been routinely included in grass seed mixes for its nitrogen-fixing properties, when it was discovered that the new wonder-herbicide 2,4-D killed clover along with crabgrass, Scotts turned on a dime and declared it to be an undesirable weed, and public opinion quickly followed. 

Most worshipers at the Church of the Perfect Lawn are men, and Steinberg thinks it’s because compulsive lawn care gives them a feeling of control – a feeling so often missing on the job.  So ad agencies write copy like: "Show the world who’s boss" and "You’re the boss when you buy a Lawn-Boy," pitches that appeal to notions of manliness, and it works all too well.

Lawn care advice from Scotts is also very successful, convincing us that multiple "steps" or applications of their products are required.  But it turns out that feeding the lawn as early as they recommend does not result in "strong roots" but rather, "sacrifices root growth for shoot growth, as any knowledgeable turf specialist will tell you," according to Steinberg.  Not to mention that all those synthetic chemicals destroy beneficial soil dwellers, like earthworms and the millions of microorganisms that we can now see in healthy soil, thanks to the invention of the electron microscope.  Those multiple applications waste money and time, too, as studies have shown that the amount of nitrogen recommended by Scotts could be reduced by half without any effect on the quality of the turf, so long as grass clippings are left in place. But don’t assume that Scotts’ organic fertilizers are benign alternatives to the synthetic ones.  In fact,  the phosphorus from an organic source produces the same algae blooms as the average synthetic weed-and-feed product, according to Steinberg.

But it’s not just Scotts that’s reading the "green" handwriting on the wall.  The American lawn industry has launched their "Project EverGreen" to shore up support for conventional lawn care.  The campaign tells the American homeowner to "pat yourself on the back for being a good environmental steward by working hard to properly maintain your home lawn and landscape."  They even claim – with a straight face – that turfgrass is an "environmental hero" for the amount of oxygen it releases into the air (as if that’s in short supply.)  But their calculations assume that if we didn’t grow turf, we’d blacktop our backyards when in fact, if we replaced turf with trees and shrubs a lot more oxygen would be produced.

Of course Scotts, like all makers of dangerous products, relies on its pro forma warning to "Read and follow all label directions."  But surveys show that nearly half of us fail to read and follow label instructions. (No surprise there – have you ever tried to figure them out?  Steinberg calls them "about as enlightening as watching daytime television.")  And only the active ingredients are even listed, not the inert ingredients, though even the EPA concedes that they "may be more toxic than the active ingredient."

Home-grown anti-lawn activism

What companies like Scotts and TruGreen are up against is a rising tide of anti-lawn sentiment that won’t be dissipating any time soon, and it started, according to American Green, with Takoma Park’s Fruitarian Network, a group that opposed even push mowers.  Steinberg speculates that "There must be something about the lawns in this suburb that turns people off to the mowing Establishment" because next came Citizens Against Lawn Mower Madness, founded by local enviro activist Mike Tidwell.  "Tidwell is not against lawns, but he and his group objected to the injuries, pollution, and noise brought on by the power mower."  And Mike tells me that yes, he still invites people to "test drive his tufu-powered lawn mower."  

 Another prominent lawn-basher is best-selling author Michael Pollan, whose 1991 gardening book Second Nature is  considered a lawn expose.  Cornell’s "Turf Guy" Frank Rossi -  a big name in academic circles – is leading the charge against overfertilization, among other ills of the corporate lawn care regime.  Rossi writes, "We need to give up our perfect-lawn ideal – it’s costing the U.S. plenty" and "Corporations have made huge profits while pushing the cost of perfect – the air and water pollution, the adverse health effects of pesticides, the power-mower injuries and resulting psychological trauma – onto the rest of American society."  TV gardening guru Paul Tukey started the nonprofit SafeLawns.org to promote organic lawn care nationally (including a demonstration site on the National Mall) and the University of Minnesota is pushing their Low Input Lawn Care program with advice very similar to Rossi’s.

And then there’s Steinberg himself.  He’s an environmental historian at Case Western Reserve who sees harmful effects on our spirits, too. "Perhaps the biggest single cost is that by buying into the corporate paradigm and making a fetish of green, weed-free, ultra-trim grass, Americans have alienated themselves from their very own yards."  And here’s a shocker: "Research shows that people who evince concern for the environment are more likely to use chemicals on their yards than those who are less ecologically aware."

So how about government action?  Not waiting for the industry to reform itself, jurisdictions like Madison, Wisconsin and 70 towns in Canada, including Toronto, have banned phosphorus in lawn fertilizer.   Further proof that Canada is way ahead of us in environmental protection, five of its provinces have banned the use of all pesticides for ornamental purposes, and the big-box stores have even removed them from their stores country-wide.  Am I the only one still imagining where we’d be if President Gore had only been inaugurated? I didn’t think so.

For more information, see Organic Lawn Care Manual by Paul Tukey, Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels, and Second Nature by Michael Pollan. The wisdom of Frank Rossi and other progressive lawn experts at Cornell are available at this terrific website.  And there’s lots more great reading in American Green than I could cover here -  about golf, biotech issues, blowers, pro-turfgrass weed laws, the plight of lawn care workers, and whether prairies really work as lawn replacement (in the East, not so much).

That’s the version I sent to my local paper.  Readers here WILL see lots more from the Steinberg book, though, coz there are too many meaty issues there NOT to.