I am a firm believer that change is made from the bottom up, starting with small problems and moving on to bigger problems. One small environmental problem that I was not aware of until very recently is lawns. In the U.S. lawns cover of 40 million acres of land and the average homeowner uses hundreds of gallons of water and burns 18 gallons of fuel per year to sustain his/her lawn. From an economic standpoint during the summer months irrigating the average household lawn could use up to as much as 60% of the total households water consumption. I won’t lie, I loved having a back lawn to play on when I grew up. My Dad is very fond of his lawn as he mows and cares for it every week, and some of his passion for gardening yard work rubbed off on me in my high school years. So for people like my Dad and I who like having lawns but want to enjoy our lawns in a more sustainable and environmentally healthy way there are other like us out there. SafeLawns is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting natural lawn care and grounds maintenance. The website offers a number of tips on how to fertilize, mow, and water your lawn in a more sustainable manner.
For example, SafeLawns suggests spreading tea or coffee grounds on your lawn as a substitute for chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers can often be harsh not only on the environment as only about 35% of the chemicals reach the plants roots, but they can also damage the plants root system and weaken the plant. The website also recommends switching to electric or even old school push mowers from the old noisy gasoline mowers. The website also gives some places to buy affordable, high quality push mowers because they are not that easy to find. Another very interesting tip is before planting your lawn cover it with a thick layer of mulch which will allow the lawn to soak up an exponentially higher amount of water, allowing for less water being wasted and in the end saving a bundle of money. I am sure the gardening group is probably amazed at how far behind I am on the usefulness of mulch. Would it be possible to use any of these tips at Occidental? I wonder how much money we as a college could save? And at the same time keep our nice lawns and reduce our environmental footprint. Again, the college may already be using more environmentally sustainable methods of lawn maintenance and I am just oblivious. Anyway, in the midst of this drought in southern California at the very least I think it would make a huge impact if just a tiny fraction of homeowners adopted some of these water saving tips on SafeLawns.org. If you are interested, check out the website at www.safelawns.org.
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I think that Occidental should definitely employ tactics such as www.safelawns.org. I must admit that I enjoy being in an urban situated setting while at the same time able to enjoy the greener of campus. In fact our beautiful campus fill of green space is something that drew me to go here. But there must be some ways to improve our water and fertilizer use. It seems ridiculous to me that in Southern California, which has been experiencing a drought for about three years now, our campus is infested with sprinklers. I think an inexpensive, easy, and practical way to do so would be to use native species to decorate the campus. There are many gorgeous native plants such as cactus, succulents and flowering plants that would require less water and maintenance to care for.
ReplyDeleteAnd what if more people, and Oxy in particular, were to abandon lawns in favor of edible landscaping? Edible landscaping, the practice of planting food producing plants rather than ornamental ones would eliminate many of the problems the modern lawn poses and increases food access for the owners. When one considers how successful the FEAST garden has been with 17 raised beds, think about how much food this school could produce if only a fraction of our lawns and other landscaped areas were designated edible landscaping areas.
ReplyDeleteThere is a landscaping subcommittee of the sustainability group that will start looking at this issue. The new higher water rates due to drought conditions give the college a financial incentive to reduce water use. In fact I think there is a $40,000 or more per acre incentive to remove lawns.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up a very important issue, one that I'm sure people across the country are unaware of. I agree with Grace, taking out the excess of rose bushes around campus that require not only an extreme amount of water but also hours of maintenance and replacing them with native species would greatly benefit Oxy.
ReplyDeleteLast year I was told that Oxy was one of the top 100 water consumers in the LA County. Whether or not that was an exaggeration by a professor in order to stimulate a response from his students or an actual fact it worried me to hear this. Since then I've been overly conscious of Oxy's landscaping habits. Pitzer College, also in the LA County, serves as a great example of how landscaping can be reworked to compliment the natural environment. I'm not suggesting we pull out all the rose bushes and only have succulents around campus, but it is necessary that we curb this overly enthusiastic water usage.
ReplyDeleteIs there any way one of the groups next semester can be devoted to campus landscaping???
I think that this is a great issue that we can address as a campus, but it is also one that we should bring up with our neighbors. Coming from New Hampshire, where everything is pretty much lush and green, I was a little surprised to see so many lawns in such a desert environment. In Highland Park, where I now live, everyone seems to take pride in keeping their front yards nicely kept and green, but not once have I seen any of my neighbors actually making use of this space, which only begs the question: why do we have lawns? The following websites offer a few interesting theories regarding the answer to this question:
ReplyDeletehttp://greeneconomics.blogspot.com/2006/03/why-do-suburbanites-all-have-green.html
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/2009/americansavannah/
Essentially, our lawns are purely iconic—a symbol of the American dream, a measure of economic success. We expend personal energy and natural resources to manicure this futile ecosystem, but for what? To not be shamed by the guy next door? Is impressing the Joneses really worth sacrificing the limited water that we have left? Obviously the answer is No, but the fact is not everyone thinks like we do. Spending a little bit more each month on water to run the lawn sprinkler may be well worth it to some if it means fitting in with the status quo.
If I learned anything in environmental economics, it’s this. Change isn’t going to come from the goodness of peoples’ hearts. It would be great if everyone suddenly became tree huggers, but that’s just not the way things are going to turn out. People need incentives—money talks— so the only way we’re going to get rid of these water intensive landscapes, is if the city pays people to do so. Similar to the rebates the LADWP is giving out for people who install solar, LADWP could also implement rebates for those that remove their lawns, or replace them with drought-tolerant landscapes. Perhaps next semester’s class can encourage the city to follow a program similar to the one in place in southern Nevada:
http://www.snwa.com/html/cons_wsl.html
I guess my suggestion to give "cash-for-grass" was so good that LA already decided to implement it.
ReplyDeletehttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2009/06/lowwater-gardening-emily-green-ladwp-lawn-rebate-drought-tolerant.html
Oops!
Las vegas still pays their residence %50 more than LA does to rip out their grass, so we can still strive for that!
I think that the sustainability committee might also want to suggest substituting rose bushes and other high maintenance agriculture with more native plants. Also, I used to work at Starbucks and I know that in most stores if not already advertised/put out in a bucket (Grounds for your Garden) then they'll be more than happy to give you free coffee grounds since otherwise they are just thrown away. This would be a waaaay cheaper option than store bought fertilizer.
ReplyDelete