Do you find that you are running out of good excuses when your parents ask you to mow the lawn? They will be surprised to hear that using a lawnmower for one hour pollutes the air as much as driving in a car for 350 miles!
Lawns can pollute in other ways, too. A lot of water is used to keep grass green...in fact, almost one-third of all household water use–more than 7 billion gallons per day–goes to watering lawns. And to make matters worse, we in the United States use 580 million gallons of gas for our lawnmowers, spend $5 billion dollars every year on fertilizers made from fossil fuels and use 67 million pounds of synthetic pesticides for our lawns! Convinced? Good, now here's what you can do:
1) Use an electric lawn mower. They produce less than 1% of the smog-contributing carbon monoxide that gas mowers put out and 1/9000th the hydrocarbons. However, they only produce 6 less pounds of carbon dioxide.
2) So, better yet, use a reel push mower like one of these. With no electricity costs, zero on-site emissions and a much smaller price tag they are a great option.
3) Water your lawn only in the morning or the evening. Water evaporates 8 times faster during the heat of the day!
4) Collect water from downspouts to water your lawn.
5) And finally, turning your yard into a backyard habitat is the best way to make your yard really green. But we'll save that for the next post. So check back in to learn more...
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