Yes! It’s literally pollution.
For those that want but are unable to maintain a lawn due to disability or ill health then there should be a scheme by the local council to cut it for them. This could would really well if a local council leaves more public space wild also. Then the work load may reduce but not entirely.
Rain gardens are very popular in the Seattle area, here’s an example of community driven programs. https://www.12000raingardens.org/
That looks great! Thanks for sharing that. Now I have to see if the UK has these.
I think a lot of your areas have similar weather, I think they would cross over nicely. There are tons of clubs and DIY videos here, this is an example: https://www.bhg.com/gardening/landscaping-projects/landscape-basics/make-a-rain-garden/
Or grow (bee friendly) plants.
Biggest downside of fake grass are. The pollution from fabrication to microplastic waste. Biodiversity unfriendly and,… and! It burns your feet in a hot summer! Shit gets hot.
Artificial soccer fields really radiate heat during sunny days.
They literally kill the soil under them too.
Lawns are also a total waste. It takes so much gas to maintain a lawn that serves literally no environmental purpose. At least fake grass you don’t need to waste gas to cut.
Wild space is great though. We should be encouraging that and discouraging all lawns, fake or real.
Gas? Why does it use gas to maintain a lawn?
Most people cut their lawn with a gas mower. Even electric requires an a mount of energy that is taking it from the grid, which unless it’s totally clean already is increasing dirty energy.
I’ve literally never even seen, or even heard of, a gas mower. Almost all of them are electric (and our electricity mix isn’t perfect, but is better than a lot of places) with the odd one being petrol for especially large gardens, but that’s increasingly rare.
Why the fuck would anyone use gas? That would be awful. Do you mean natural gas from the mains? Hydrogen? Bottled Calor gas? I’ve absolutely no idea what a gas mower could even be and searching is giving zero results that make sense.
Maybe they’re American and so mow their ten acre lawns with a sit on mower.
UK gardens are about 3 meters long and you can just plug the mower in.
Aye, sounds about right.
Matey boy assumed the rest of the world is as wasteful as the US is.
Gas?
Wild space attracts dangerous insects like ticks. Back in my home country wild and uncut lawn is a serious administrative offence with a hefty fine.
I think fake grass looks absolutely shit and I don’t like the environmental impact but I don’t think that banning it is the solution.
Let’s see some incentives for people that keep their gardens wildlife and eco friendly like a council tax discount.
If we are going to ban petrol and diesel cars, and oil and gas boilers, we can certainly ban fake grass.
There’s some fake grass that looks absolutely real. It’s just a bit pricier than most people would be willing to pay.
I’m not advocating for it, just putting it out there.
I am curious as to why you think banning it isn’t a solution? Seems like a very obvious solution to me.
I just don’t like the idea of banning everything I don’t personally agree with.
I’d be the first to object if someone else wanted something I like banned just because they think it’s shit.
Tax the crap out of it, make it uneconomical for those who don’t need it.
“Only rich people should have fake grass” - you
Rich people have no need for fake grass. There’s plenty of acres to take the dog piss and shit and Jeeves will take care of the gardening.
Fake grass is for people that for some reason think it’s better for dog mess and for people that can’t be bothered to do a bit of gardening. It’s clearly not for the look because no one has ever said “wow, that fake grass looks even better than the real thing!”
What’s the environmental impact of fake grass? Isn’t it better than real grass because it doesn’t need water or pesticides? (I don’t have a grass yard or lawn so I don’t know what upkeep a fake one entails. My neighbor has one in their backyard, which basically replaced dirt with a few patches of grass from the prior owner. We have concrete from our prior owner. )
There are a lot of environmental impacts created by far grass. For a start, they create substantial damage to local biodiversity. Real grass is home to many kinds of insects and other animals, as is the the soil beneath it. Other animals such as birds rely on those insects for food. Fake grass is a habitat and food source for nothing, and damages the soil beneath it.
Healthy plant covered soil is also a natural carbon sink, so the mere existence of fake grass contributes to CO2 buildup. The production and installation of fake grass is also carbon intensive.
Fake grass eventually degrades and requires replacement, and despite manufacture claims, recycling it is difficult and often practically impossible. The degradation of fake grass is also a source of microplastic pollution, which can be carried on the air or leach into the soil, and eventually reach water sources.
That’s just a brief summary, there’s plenty of more comprehensive information available online. The stuff is quite frankly another disaster for the environment waiting to happen. A ban can’t come soon enough. There are plenty of better options for those that need an alternative to natural grass.
Fake grass is a habitat and food source for nothing, and damages the soil beneath it.
This may be why my neighbors went with fake grass. They had the soil tested and it had a high percentage of lead. (They have a young child who was still crawling at that time.) They had to remove some of the top layer, IIRC, and put down some kind of protective membrane and then did fake grass on top. So this may depend on where you live. We have concrete in our backyard and bought playfalls (padded tiles that you sometimes see in playgrounds) to place under our playset. Luckily we did not have to deal with lead. We have plants that grow well in shade and a tree in our front yard (meaning, it’s just for looks - our kids can’t play in it.)
I went with a rocky garden instead of fake grass because the occupant of the house had a grass allergy. Why pretend and fill the garden with nasty plastic.
You don’t have to put pesticides on your grass you know you can just leave it.
It gets watered by the rain, and the rain falls on it regardless of if it’s real or fake or concrete. So it isn’t a waste.
Anyway it allows for drainage. One of the reasons we get so much flooding nowadays is because we’ve concreted over everything.
A lawn needs neither of these things, or if you choose just to have plants instead (which we did in our small garden) then that needs neither water nor pesticides. Occasionally I might pull by hand some straggly stuff, or use a small electric strimmer to tidy things up (e.g. the garden path when stuff starts growing between the paving).
Unlike artificial grass, and even though my garden is small, this spring I had two birds nesting, I see quite a lot of bees and butterflies, and I just let the ants get on with doing their business. Pesticides and herbicides are never used. If there’s a plant I don’t want growing somewhere I can pull it up manually. There’s no need for the area to be super manicured.
Plastic grass supports little in the way of biodiversity and will constantly shed microplastics. Actual grass also allows the absorption of rain water into the ground below, whereas fake grass does not. This can contribute to localised flooding, and causes problems for replenishment of aquifers. All in all its awful stuff and the sooner it’s banned the better IMO.
The environmental impact of actual grass that you keep cut is likely far worse. Preferably, grass lawns are banned generally. The expectation of keeping short grass maintained should die.
So you’d rather concrete jungle over lawns? I feel like if you banned grass lawns that’s what you’d get.
That’s a stupid false dichotomy. Why would those be the only options. Clover is a good low growing grass substitute. You can also grow native pants in most of the space so cutting isn’t required. There are many options that aren’t grass lawns that require a ton of maintenance.
You think if you told people they all had to get rid of their grass lawns heaps of them wouldn’t just replace them with a load of concrete if they didn’t want the maintenance? Enough people do it already without being forced to by a ban.
Sure, some would if that were the rule. How about we ban both. The option isn’t binary.
Good luck with banning either. Sounds like it’d be a popular policy.
We’re in a thread about astro turfing lawns, so when you paraphrase “a kept lawn is likely worse for the environment”, what you are implying is that astroturfing a lawn is better for the environment than a real one. Which I think is a very bold statement to make.
That aside I do like the idea of things like clover lawns, but is that going to appeal to the sort of person that astroturfs their lawn because “muh dog shit and piss” or because they can’t be bothered to get the lawnmower out?
Astroturf does not require mowing.
You can use an electric mower and power it with solar and wind
Does grass not count as a native plant?
It is. The grasses we use for our gardens are generally native, well unless you got some exotic grass for some weird reason.
Also, let the weeds grow! Your perfectly manicured garden looks weird and monocultures are bad!
The American style super manicured laws with sprinklers and all maybe, but your average home lawn that gets cut on average once a month and is the home to all sorts of wild life no way.
Natural grass is a habitat and food source for many insects and small animals, and healthy plant covered soil is a natural carbon sink. Fake grass provides none of that, while creating substantial CO2 emissions in production and installation, and damaging local biodiversity.
We have only a small space in our garden that’s quite sheltered and has poor drainage. We use that space for the dogs to do thier business and if it was real grass there it would just be a toxic shit swamp.
Also in the city near me they took up a lot of paving stones on a well travelled area and replaced it with Astroturf. Were it real grass it would be ground into a dirt track in a few days.
There are useful applications.
Yep we had a small 3m square patch of paving, we tried turf and it died due to overuse with kids playing and use using it for sitting out, picnics and BBQs. The choice is deck or fake grass and fake grass is cheaper.
We have wildflower border and fake grass currently.
Have you ever thought about walking stones or paving stones and a hardy ground cover? I can’t imagine feeling close to nature on fake grass and doesn’t the bbq melt the grass?
BBQ is on a couple of paving slabs, was morr talking about social seating and eating But paving slabs are hard, less comfy for play and seating. Also they get very hot in summer (seem to get hotter than the fake grass). I don’t see why dead area of stone is any better
Hardy ground cover may work but we have struggled to find any hardy enough to establish.
I was suggesting the mix, where you plant the hardy ground cover in the holes of a paver.
I don’t see why dead area of stone is any better
I think it’s the cheap plastic and we know it’s not great for us, kids especially. I guess it’s better than painting your dirt or gravel? https://tucson.com/news/local/arizonas-painted-gravel-yards-fading-into-history/article_c1e10e28-a044-11e0-8bb2-001cc4c002e0.html
Also in the city near me they took up a lot of paving stones on a well travelled area and replaced it with Astroturf.
Why didn’t they just keep the paving stones?
I guess they figured it would look nicer to have the fake grass with some tall planters on it that just the larger swathe of concrete with planters on
I stopped mowing my grass years ago and let nature take over.
Looks a bit messy for the first few years, but after a while it’s a haven for insects.
You’ve got to keep an eye so one thing doesn’t take over. Like I had to chop back and dig up the pampas grass plant, because I had no interest in being sliced to ribbons by a knife wielding triffid every day. Blackberry bushes are apparently a bitch and will take the lot so don’t have those.
I’m sure the neighbours hate it, but I don’t give a fuck what they think. My garden doesn’t need watering and was still green last year when everyone else’s garden was brown and dead in the 40 degree heat.
Wild gardens are basically how most gardens should be kept, so nice one there.
I did exactly the same, not only it was full of insects (and mostly ladybugs and later butterflies) but the plants seemed a lot more healthy.
Fake grass is bloody stupid.
If you don’t want to cut your lawn either let it grow into a wild flower lawn, and pretend that that was the goal all along, and it’s not that you’re lazy.
Or dig it up and set it up as a plant bed. At least that’s still real and not unconvincing polluting plastic.
I just installed one of these for my g/f in her back yard catio and I think it’s great. I play 7 a side on it twice a week.
Why would people want such a useful material ‘banned’? If you don’t like it, then don’t install it. If it doesn’t work out great in your space, then you can always remove it.
In terms of waste, you can say that about literally everything we consume.
Why would people want such a useful material ‘banned’? If you don’t like it, then don’t install it.
For the same reason we are trying to phase out fossil fuels as an energy source - environmental degradation harms everyone. It’s not a matter of personal taste, it’s about protecting the planet we need to live on.
Why would people want such a useful material ‘banned’?
Because it’s fucking up the planet and if you haven’t noticed, the planet has been taking quite the beating these past 3 weeks.
In terms of waste, you can say that about literally everything we consume.
Real grass is not consumed and thinking about everything in terms of human consumption is the problem. Change your mindset.
Real grass is not consumed
I’m not sure what you mean by that, but in many cases people are laying it over what otherwise would be concrete, or gravel places that are not suited to a lawn.
I have one because we have too much shade to grow grass. We have a 3 storey 60s house and a small, north facing garden. That said only one brand was recyclable at the end of its life, which is a shame
In terms of waste, you can say that about literally everything we consume.
So it is either all of it or nothing in your book?
Do we ban everything wasteful?
I’m not against it, I don’t like waste but starting with fake grass seems odd considering it has uses and there’s plenty of shit we manufacture that is properly useless.
Why would people want such a useful material ‘banned’?
Because it’s not actually useful, it’s just poison.
In terms of waste, you can say that about literally everything we consume.
Yeah, and we need to stop. It’s literally going to drive us to extinction, along with countless other species. This kind of apathy is disgusting.
It can be useful. It’s a great surface for doing any form of outdoor exercise on.
Pretty absurd to pretend any of its uses come close to outweighing the negatives.
Claiming it’s “not actually useful” though is just wrong.
If a thing does more harm than good, it isn’t useful, the people using it are just selfish.
That’s an interesting new definition of ‘useful’ you have.
It’s certainly more sound than yours, which apparently requires nothing more than “it feels kinds of nice to step on” while it poisons the ground and eliminates yet more of your local ecosystem.
This looks like a “make me an article out of this press release” article. It’s noise-news. Clickbait pagefiller crap.
Also for the average size of a garden in the UK (median), it’s probably less plastic than a month’s worth of groceries wastes.
A quarter. And about half are still not entirely convinced that Brexit might not have been the greatest of ideas. Idiots.
Three quarter of Brits opinions dont matter
That is not how statistics work my friend.
The only arguments against fake grass are that it doesn’t look nice, and it isn’t made from sustainable materials. The arguments for fake grass include that it is low maintenance (negating some of the environmental impact), and that it is much better for people with accessibility needs.
Meanwhile, grass lawns require lots if maintenance (not good at all for the environment), aren’t good for people with accessibility needs, and look boring and unvaried. Meanwhile the upside for a grass lawn is it looks traditional. To that I say, screw tradition. Grow clover, wildflowers, moss, and edible plants in your yard. These NIMBY brit-karens fan fuck off
https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/discover/why-are-artificial-lawns-bad-for-the-environment
Minimising the objections down to that and then writing them all off as NIMBYism is such an absurd strawman.
I agree that non traditional lawns are better, but that definitely does not include artificial pitch.
