The Environment is Healthy People

With freshwater shortages imminent around the world and many people starting to refer to freshwater as "blue gold" (click here for more information on Nova Scotia's freshwater resources), it's time to turn off the tap on traditional mono-lawns, and inspire homeowners to create beautiful, healthy, sustainable properties, minimizing mowing and weeding, using less chemical maintenance, and producing something useful to nature (such as food, water, habitat for wildlife).

A thousand square feet of lawn requires an inch or two of water put on it over the summer - easily totaling more than 143,000 litres a summer (Mellor, 2003, The Lawn Bible: How to Keep it Green, Groomed and Growing Every Season of the Year). A standard lawn sprinkler uses more water in an hour than a combination of 10 toilet flushes, two dishwasher loads, two 5-minute showers and a full load of clothes (See Daniels, 1995, The Wild Lawn Handbook: Alternatives to the Traditional Front Lawn). In fact, an estimated 30% of residential water consumed on the east coast goes to watering our lawns (National Xeriscape Council, 1990).

Then there’s our old nemesis, the lawnmower, which is one of the least efficient of human inventions. North Americans spill more than 64 million litres of gasoline every summer in the process of refueling lawn and garden equipment. This gas ends up in our waterways. (US EPA, 2003, A Source Book on Natural Landscaping for Public Officials).

Let’s not forget the fertilizers. When nitrogen fertilizers start to break down, they release nitrous oxide into the atmosphere - a greenhouse gas as well as a contributor to acid rain, the ozone hole and smog (Tisdale, Nelson & Berton, 1993, Soil Fertility and Fertilizers). When fertilizers run off into our waterways, they cause algae blooms, which use up the water's oxygen and kill many of the organisms (such as fish) that live in that water. Some of the fish kills in inland waters are due to this effect, as is the massive 'Dead Zone' in the Gulf of Mexico. (Bormann, Balmori, & Geballe, 2001, Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony; and Institute for Agriculture, Trade and Policy, 2002 Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico: A Growing Problem.)

Then, to top it off, we drink that nitrate (US EPA, 2006, Consumer Factsheet on Nitrates/Nitrites). We also drink pesticides, including mecoprop, 2,4-D and dicamba (Smith & Tillotson, 1993, “Potential Leaching of Herbicides Applied to Golf Course Greens” in eds. Racke and Leslie’s Pesticides in Urban Environments).

Pesticides also get us in the air, including the air inside our homes. They can be tracked into the home on our feet and clothing. Pesticides are an increasingly unacceptable health risk. According to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, May 2000:

Mounting research evidence clearly demonstrates that pesticides cannot be considered safe at any level of exposure. Pesticides are known, or suspected to play a role in a multitude of diseases and disorders, including cancers (brain, breast, stomach, childhood leukemia, prostate and testicles), reduced fertility, damage to the thyroid and pituitary glands, lowered immunity, developmental abnormalities and behavioural problems.

Research by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) shows that pesticides contain substances that are known, probable or possible carcinogens.