We are talking about the impacts that lawns and landscaping
continue to have on the environment and it goes beyond your front lawn. As
someone who used to live on the coast, I love the beaches and the ocean. But
did you know that even leaving your grass clippings out instead of recycling
them can have harmful effects on both the atmosphere and the water quality near
your home. Grass clippings release carbon when they decompose which just get
released into the atmosphere. Also, when you recycle grass clippings, it
reduces the amount of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which is good for coastal
towns because the excess nitrogen is a major source of pollution. The excess
nitrogen also helps those algae grow in the summers, which prohibits anyone
from being able to swim in the ocean. Even if people don’t stop landscaping and
tending their lawns, there are ways for each and every person to help the
environment a little more, even if it simply using less water or recycling
those darn grass clippings. For more information, check out this site.
Welcome to EcoLife! This blog, which is hosted by Portland State University students, aims to motivate, inform, and inspire change. We want you to learn about the complicated issues surrounding homelessness, while going beyond the tip of the iceberg. We hope to establish a connection with you through our posts regarding the lives and experiences of homeless individuals, expressed in these numerous stories and articles. We hope you enjoy our blog!
Apparently NASA know about computers but not grass. Most mowers produce clippings in clumps, which suffocate and kill grass if not removed. The clippings also release almost all their nitrogen to air over 3 days so leaving clippings on the lawn is NOT recycling. The other common option, of dumping clippings in a pile or directly on a compost heap, is also a disaster since most of the grass breaks down anaerobically - a methane and leachate pollution bomb!
ReplyDeleteI've managed lawns in Australia and England and found that far less watering is needed than NASA and others suggest. Remember the grass is functional, it's not a crop that needs to grow much. If you treat it as a crop you just waste fertiliser, water and time on extra cutting. Let it get pale in dry weather; just water if it wouldn't survive or if you are seeding new areas. Don't fertilise with artificial nitrogen at all. Grow clover (naturally nitrogen-fixing) among the grass or scatter sieved natural compost mixed with charcoal. Most importantly, recycle the clippings by aerobic composting, which gives you the most carbon fixing and the least loss of nutrients as pollutants. It's easy - just pile the clippings 8" high for 1 day, to reduce the water and nitrogen content until you get the right C/N ratio to support aerobic rather than anaerobic compost. When it looks partly dried on top or partly pale from browned grass then it's ready. Pile it all into your compost heap or 1m3 builders bags and in just 3 weeks you'll have compost suitable to use in the garden as a mulch. Leave it for 6 weeks and you'll have compost suitable for adding into soil as a high-nutrient drought-proofing plant food. Happy mowing!
The pity is that we have stopped believing that nature created us and everything around us absolutely interactive. If we had just observed a simple discipline of respecting a simple pact with the Nature of give and take and affirm for seeking abundance, nothing would have gone wrong. Seventy percent of Earth's surface is covered with water, but Nature has reserved just 1 percent as potable to be consumed by us even for watering our plants and maintaining grass fields. So is our body 70% water with an intake and outlet of it of not exceeding 1% to remain healthy. Water is the presiding commodity to balance the entire eco system and sustain life. The process of decomposition of any produce and its natural recycling phenomena are two different things. If we leave all things to their natural phenomena of recycling and just manage the balance of water, we may be able to get a natural balance in our eco system. Over the past one and half centuries we have created a huge overe ground installed capacity of water bottled as still water, sparkling water, wines and soft drinks. That water was supposed to remain subsoil for the grass to grow to its optimum form and get recycled with the changing seasons. Thousands of years ago, Indian saints had visualized that man's greed is going to upset the balance by making water a commodity what we have done. Just 500 years ago Guru Nanak the first Guru of Sikhs without challenging any myths in the Hindu religious beliefs tried to reinvent the essential process of "Individual Water Harvesting" to avoid any imbalance whatever change may happen in the process of human evolution. Guru Nanak just wanted every one to observe that age old tradition of sacrificing a handful from one's share of drinking water that one returns to Mother Earth every time one consumes water with the affirmation that the land around him remain green, fertile and free from droughts, floods and blizzards. We have to understand the simplicity of the tradition that can extend Earth's life.
ReplyDelete[It is He] who has made for you the earth as a bed [spread out] and inserted therein for you roadways and sent down from the sky, rain and produced thereby categories of various plants.al-Qur'aan 20:53
ReplyDelete