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The modern lawn: beautiful grass, continually green, pest free, and perfectly mowed.  Sounds fantastic, right?  Well, it may look gorgeous to the homeowner and passerby, but how 'green' is that lawn? 

Forget about vibrant color, we're talking about eco-friendly green!  Maintainence of the typical modern lawn actually poses many problems for the environment.  In addition to the detrimental effects of herbicide use (information on this can be found here), lawn care poses many other ecological problems.  Watering lawns to keep up that "healthy green" uses up a lot of fresh water, a finite resource.  Use of pesticides and herbicides, as well as preference for growing one species of grass, decreases local biodiversity.  Chemicals in fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides deplete nutrients in the soil and leach into groundwater systems.  Gasoline powered lawn mowers create air and noise pollution.  Many people bring grass clippings to the dump, adding to material waste levels.  Constant cutting of grass reduces root length, thereby making the ground more susceptible to erosion and soil loss.

Want to know more?  Visit these and other websites for additional information!

http://www.purdue.edu/envirosoft/lawn/src/environmental.htm

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2005/feb/science/pt_lawns.html

http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/lawntalk/lawntalk09.html

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Environment/RATE/royfox1.html

http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/issues/lawnissues.html