Build Better Neighborhoods
(Page 3 of 4)
August/September 2004
By Dave Wann
• Lawn Care. Many neighborhoods appear to practice competitive lawn care, watering and fertilizing to the richest shade of green, whatever the cost. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), homeowners apply pesticides to their lawns at a rate 20 times higher than farmers apply pesticides to their fields. Meanwhile, gasoline-powered landscape equipment accounts for more than 5 percent of urban air pollution, runoff from lawns pollutes our water, and as much as one-fifth of household garbage is yard waste, with most going directly into landfills.
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What if, instead, we developed a mutually beneficial agreement with our neighbors to make front lawns more productive and less consumptive?
The book Redesigning the American Lawn suggests one sensible plan, the Freedom Lawn. The logic is simple: absorb the enemy rather than eradicate it. Wildflowers, herbs and weeds are all accepted as part of the Freedom Lawn, as long as they can tolerate the whirring blades of the lawn mower. This laid-back approach to lawn care reduces the time it takes to maintain the yard and eliminates the use of pesticides and fertilizers.
We also could encourage people to plant productive and low maintenance vegetation such as strawberries, which make an excellent ground cover, and perennial flowers. (For more ecofriendly landscaping tips, visit the EPA Web site, www.epa.gov/greenkit/landscap.htm .)
• EcoTeams. Another opportunity for neighbors to work together is house-tuning: teaming up to make each house on the block more resource efficient. The Global Action Plan’s EcoTeam Program is one example (go to www.globalaction plan.org.uk/ and click on “At Home”). More than 40,000 people in 30 U.S. states and 17 countries have participated on
EcoTeams, meeting in groups of five to eight households to discuss ways to make their homes more energy efficient. Some of their actions include using high-efficiency compact-fluorescent light bulbs and replacing old, drafty windows with efficient “low-E” windows. EcoTeams can cut annual costs in each house by $300 a year or more by reducing water and energy use.
Jennifer Olsen and Per Kielland-Lund of Madison, Wis., joined an EcoTeam in 1998. They say taking that step gave them newfound optimism that sustainable living was possible. “We were able to implement many changes in our daily lives that we, for a long time, had wanted,” Olsen and Kielland-Lund say. “Through our own direct experience, we see that necessary changes can be made.”
