Get your grass off gas

The perfect lawn doesn’t require a gas-powered mower 10

The following essay was written by Paul Tukey, founder of SafeLawns.org and the author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual.

grassThe perfect lawn doesn’t require gasoline or synthetic fertilizer.Muffet via FlickrGrass Happens.

As a former lawn care professional, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I first saw that bumper sticker on a passing pickup truck full of lawn mowers. Insert any word of your choice to replace grass - Death, Tax, Greed, Hunger, you name it - and you will be commemorating the same fundamental inevitability.

Call it twisted landscape humor, an inside joke for anyone who has spent part of his or her life trying to keep landscapes under control. Including all the various species, grasses are some of the most prolific and resilient flora on the planet. Virtually anywhere you live, chances are you will have some spiked, green plants sprouting on your property, whether or not you want them there.

Lawns have always been another matter entirely. They haven’t just happened, but have instead necessitated all manner of conflict resolution. From the earliest days of civilization, an area of short-cropped vegetation required decisive action to meet the definition of a lawn. At first, goats and sheep were put out to forage plants to the ground; in the 1700s, peasants and slaves wielded machetes and scythes.

Almost two centuries ago tinkerers and machinists in Europe and North America began competing relentlessly to be first to create devices that would make the practice of mowing more accessible to everyman. By 1871, Elwood McGuire won Round 1. The resident of Richmond, Indiana, developed a cutting machine that could be mass-produced and, in the process, unleashed a latent lawn lust that seemed to have been secretly encoded in America’s collective DNA. By the beginning of the 20th century, inventors had created a steam-powered lawn mower and then in the 1950s came the machine that almost single-handedly painted the American Dream: the gas-powered rotary mower.

“The appearance of a lawn bespeaks the personal values of the resident,” declared a trade association known as The Lawn Institute in 1953, commenting on a post-World War II boom in mower purchases. “Some feel that a person who keeps the lawn perfectly clipped is a person who can be trusted.”

We may have moved on from our grandfather’s politics, but haven’t budged a bit from our collective definition of American success: Nice home, shiny car, big green lawn. According to NASA satellite images, the United States is blanketed in approximately 50 million acres of turf, with several hundred thousand acres of grass being added each year.

All that mowing, trimming and blowing contributes up to 10 percent of our nation’s air pollution every summer in the form of hydrocarbons (a major component of smog), particulate matter (which damages respiratory systems), carbon monoxide (a poisonous gas) and carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming). Gas-powered lawn mowers, blowers and trimmers are 10 to 30 times more polluting than combustion-engine automobiles and, well, we all know where the car industry is headed.

It should come as no surprise, then, that today’s Elwood McGuires are waging a new race: to develop kinder, gentler technologies for taming America’s little green patches of paradise. Like it or not, the grass is still growing. More and more folks are mowing it with machines that are human- or electricity-powered. A new campaign co-promoted by the non-profit SafeLawns.org of Washington, D.C., and the for-profit Black & Decker company of Maryland challenges homeowners everywhere to “Get Your Grass Off Gas.”

“By choosing electric or cordless outdoor power equipment, you’re not only helping the environment, your neighborhood and your family, but you are also freeing yourself of the mess and hassles associated with gas-powered products,” said DeAnn Romjue, director for Black & Decker’s Outdoor Products division.

The statistics in support of the change are staggering. A traditional mower running for 45 minutes consumes about 50,000 BTUs of energy in the form of gasoline. An electric mower doing the same job requires just 2,500 BTUs in form of kilowatts. Some estimates put the electric mowers at 90 percent less polluting than gas models and the cost savings per season is ample. About $5 of electricity will run your electric mower for the whole season on a third-acre lawn that would otherwise require about $40 to $50 in gas and oil.

After four years of kicking the gas habit in my own yard, however, my favorite aspects of the switch to an electric mower have nothing to do with money. The machine always starts, it’s far quieter and my clothes don’t smell like fumes when I’m done. The process, believe it or not, has become kind of fun.

Grass, after all, may be inevitable. The agony of caring for it shouldn’t have to be.

—

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  1. Morgan Posted 9:20 am
    14 Jul 2009

    Moving from gas to electric is definitely a step forward, but many are not aware that in many regions of the country, our electricity comes from burning coal. It's important to remember that in caring about the environment, less is more--all that upgrading fills up the landfill. http://www.ecohearth.com/eco-news/eco-op-ed/704-too-much-choice-bad-for-you-and-the-earth.html

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  2. piglet's avatar

    piglet Posted 12:52 pm
    14 Jul 2009

    YOU GUYS! YOU'RE ALL CAUGHT UP IN MOWING THE LAWN INSTEAD OF LOOKING AT WHY WE SHOULD HAVE NO LAWN! LANDSCAPING ACCORDING TO NATURAL LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS WILL BE ESSENTIAL AS WE AWAKE TO THE MASSIVE WATER ISSUES COMING OUR WAY. BESIDES, WHEN I THINK OF ALL THE CHEMICALS USED ON LAWNS TO KEEP THEM GREEN AND "WEED-FREE" ALL OF WHICH SEEPS INTO OUR GROUND WATER I WONDER WHY YOU ARE NOT PUTTING YOUR GREAT BRAINS AND THINKING INTO SOLVING THE "NO LAWNS" ISSUE.

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  3. Cara_J Posted 4:25 pm
    14 Jul 2009

    Both commenters above have good points. Regarding the first comment, however, an electric mower will still produce far less pollution than a gas mower even if the electricity is from coal. Regarding the second comment, I'll ignore the annoying all-caps and agree heartily. Let's move beyond a sea of grass and include a variety of hardy, low-maintenance ground covers. Americans are not ready for "no lawn" at all, but we should forgo the weed-killers and synthetic fertilizers and accept a much less "perfect" lawn, as well as choosing electric or manual mowers. And in wetter parts of the country, watering is not necessary. Grass goes dormant in the hottest period, then recovers. Yet many people water all summer long.


    I've used a manual mower for two years, except for about 3 occasions when we've let it get too long and had to borrow a conventional mower. The manual mower has some wonderful advantages but also a downside: It won't cut very long grass, wet plants, or various other plants/weeds--a problem for those of us who don't treat with chemicals. It's a workout and takes longer.

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  4. Morgan Posted 9:30 pm
    14 Jul 2009

    I live in a non-lawn community in the high desert and have never owned a mower. My yard is natural native grasses, flowers, and scrubby-looking trees, watered only by occasional rain.  Sometimes we cut the grass with a scythe to keep the fire hazard low near the house. A groomed, chemically treated lawn is not part of my universe. I can't imagine spending time and energy on something so trivial. Goats are probably the best solution for weeds.I am aware though, that in most US cities, lawns are the norm. If I lived in such an environment, I would make my front yard edible and more interesting. For sure, there would be no chemical applications.  I agree that we will be facing major water issues. Some sort of ground cover holds the soil and regreens the land, which rainwater catchment can support. In the high desert, lawns are frowned upon if not completely disallowed by zoning laws. I'd be worried about the tap water if I lived in a lawn-speckled neighborhood.

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  5. kristen510's avatar

    kristen510 Posted 9:30 am
    15 Jul 2009

    The perfect lawn is no lawn at all. That expanse of green has so many drawbacks:-Excessive water use.-Necessity of herbicides and fertilizers which poison our streams and groundwater.-ZERO habitat and food value for birds, bugs, and wildlife.-Boring. Not even the most imaginative kid can have as much fun on a bare lawn as in a tree or other secret garden hiding place.Urban gardens with the proper plants can make a huge difference to native wildlife, especially pollinators like native bees. In terms of beauty, function and resource conservation, a yard filled with native drought-tolerant plants is the solution.

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  6. Cara_J Posted 10:29 am
    15 Jul 2009

    The "best" lawn may be very different in different climates.  Where I live in the Midwest, vegetation explodes with growth in spring and summer.  If we did nothing, the plants (whether native prairie or the "weeds" that grow in disturbed areas) would soon be taller than our young children and too thick to walk through.  Fun for exploring, perhaps, but no good for games of frisbee or football or for hanging laundry out.  And the prickly bushes are pretty brutal.  Therefore I think cutting part of the lawn during the growing season makes sense--but not with a gas mower!  I would love to know of low-lying ground cover plants that would thrive in my area, to further reduce mowing.  I pull the prickly weeds by hand.   And like I said, we never water or chemically treat our grass-covered lawn even though all our neighbors do.  The difference in appearance is not dramatic.

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  7. piglet's avatar

    piglet Posted 1:09 pm
    15 Jul 2009

    LOSE THE LAWN - SOME GREAT IDEAS TO GO LAWNLESS:http://www.sunset.com/garden/earth-friendly/lose-the-lawn-low-water-landscaping-00400000041830/page11.html

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  8. Ravens Voice Posted 8:23 am
    16 Jul 2009

    Lawns are only practical for people who graze livestock on them.  Otherwise they are simply evidence of how slavishly stupid status-seekers can be.

    That's right, lawns are yet another example of uppity-middle-class status-copying from the days when only wealthy people had land they didn't grow food on.  The muddle-minded middle class has been copying the status symbols of the rich for FAR too long, often without any comprehension of why the rich had them to begin with.Get rid of that uesless water-sucking patch pf patchy green-brown, and put in a nicely planned, mulched, low-moisture, high-yeld veggie garden.   Yes, your neighbors may look askance at you...but you'll be laughing with delight when you bite into fresh, organic veggies. 

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  9. pclemens Posted 9:46 am
    16 Jul 2009

    We purchased a reel mower last summer in an effort to 'get off the gas'.  While I know they won't work in every situation, we have been extremely pleased with the experience and the results...clean, quiet, never runs out of energy; and it has a grass catcher attachment to boot so we can feed our compost tumbler!!

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  10. penguin Posted 5:02 pm
    18 Jul 2009

    I had a lot of fun as a kid out playing in the yard, and while i am an apartment dweller now, i can't imagine having a home without a lawn for my kids and maybe even a family dog to play in.  while i here the concerns over how damaging a lawn can be-- it just seems strange to not have one.  Maybe i'm just a spoiled american, but i think that encouraging people to go gasless is a great step, not everyone is willing to go grassless.  People are more likely to be willing to start with small changes that don't require them to change their lifestyles too much, when you ask them to do so they are more likely to not want to listen any more and less willing to make any change. 

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