Artificial Turf and Environmental Stewardship
I just met a guy who sells and installs artificial grass, and we had a nice chat about how far this industry has come from the days of the first “Astroturf” in the late 1960s. At that point, it was so primitive, many athletes wished it had never happened. I recall Richie Allen, then star third baseman of the Philadelphia Phillies (baseball team) say, “If a horse can’t eat it, I don’t want to play on it.”
I ventured that it’s probably a hundred times better at this point, and he showed a picture like the one above. Impressive, I would say.
I asked him about the typical motivations his customers have. It turns out that they’re mostly people, especially those getting old, who are “done” with the work and cost required to maintain a nice lawn: the water bills and the aggravation of mowing.
Of course, I was hoping to hear about a consideration for environmental sustainability. 
He says that this does come up, though it’s less common , and some people object that artificial turf re-radiates more heat back into the atmosphere than living grass (which is true, though I was surprised that the average Joe knows this). He counters that by pointing out the reduction in consumption of gasoline for the mowers, the reduction in water consumption, and the elimination of the need for chemical fertilizers.
Good guy; hope he does well. This is a nice step forward, though not as powerful as edible lawns, the subject of another post.
Craig,
Artificial lawns eh? Well, that’s consistent, you can park your gasoline car on the cement beside your artificial lawn that sustains no wildlife, not even insects or worms.
You can then enjoy eating your artificial chemically produced burger while seated on your mock wood chair around your synthetic wood cracker barrel, and bleat on about evil oil companies etc, destroying the natural environment.
Of course you won’t mention the microplastics pollution in both marine as well as soil environments, caused by artificial lawns, nor stuff like heavy metals leaching from the stuff into into the water table.
You will carefully avoid any discussion of the deadly toxic PFAS chemicals found in turf samples,or all the other nasties.
But hey, what do you care?
It’s only trolls like me and my ilk, that invest in promoting natural lawn care and non-pollutant garden by the adoption of electric mowers and electric horticultural power tools.
We also invest and promote natural environmentally sustainable horticultural and lawn care products, because we love the idea of sharing our gardens with birds, birds and all kinds of life even insects and worms.
But, I guess that’s why we park our Electric cars beside our natural lawn watered by recovered waste water.
We eat real meat, and celebrate the circle of life enhanced by technology that removes the harm without destroying the natural.
But what do we know,eh/ We are just those ignorant “deplorable” trolls down the street!