At Home Depots, garden supply, and hardware stores across the country alarmingly large piles of things like "Grubex", fertilizers, herbicides, and other poisonous materials in 40 pound bags are displayed. Homeowners are causing untold amounts of pollution, spread of toxic wastes, groundwater contamination, and harm to pets, children, pregnant women, and fireflies - to name a few.
I see little flags everywhere on lawns - flags meaning "poison is here!". It absolutely infuriates me to see these not only on people's private property - since poison and fertilizer will clearly leach out beyond puny property lines and affect fish, birds, insects, mammals, et al - but audaciously applied to the little strips of grass on sidewalks, which is public property!
The facts on lawn chemicals are easy to find, but civic authorities, homeowners, so called lawn care companies, and certainly retailers of poisons are for the most part uninterested. The firefly is a sort of canary in the coal mine, and a pretty good rallying point on which to raise issues of other collateral damage in the world of lawn warfare. You can sign up with Boston's Museum of Science to get involved in the welfare of fireflies; this site also makes a good classroom project.
Lawns are a hot topic due to the commercial brainwashing that has taken place since about the end of WWII. Products used in warfare have tended to find a way to be used on lawns - so wars are never really over: the field of battle has merely shifted. Lawns are big business to several classes of manufactures of course, not just companies like Scotts. Real estate markets promote toxic practices by the now commonplace term,"Curb Appeal". Those who make and use leaf blower machines are only a small, though extremely annoying, sub group of the social obsession hell bent upon achieving the perfect lawn. I imagine a world in which we all grew blueberries instead of supporting this vast and harmful complex of industries.
There are also subtle ways that, though not a direct effect of "lawn care", have almost certainly caused death and/or devastation to some through the simple fact that most of these "lawn care" contractors, with their dump trucks and trailers festooned with the tools of the trade, park right in the roadway! They even put up little red emergency cones, as if what they are doing takes precedence over the safety or right of way of passersby and neighbors. How many bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorists have been injured or killed through this type of rude behavior is perhaps unknown. But I often see close calls as people are distracted from where they are going by the roadside commotion or swerve to avoid riding mowers or plumes of blown debris that intrude into the road.
Why the police are not called upon to order these folks off the road is simply one more piece of the twisted urban mores that surround "lawn care" and legitimize that done by some that causes harm to the many. The irony is that many of the heaviest consumers of these destructive products and practices never actually sit on their grass to enjoy a picnic, roll in it
with their kids, or see the blades for the lawn.
with their kids, or see the blades for the lawn.
