These days we all know how important it is to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’. You might be in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ camp and believe that we’re on a fast track to certain global destruction, or you take the more conservative view that if nothing else it just makes good sense not to pollute the environment left right and centre. Either way you’ll know that taking steps to reduce emissions and the use of water and fossil fuels is a necessary step we should all be taking.
Mowing your lawn and keeping it watered and healthy should therefore be undertaken with an environmentally conscious approach. This could mean mowing less frequently, watering the grass less frequently, and planning your mowing session to be as quick and economical as possible. If the size of your garden allows for it a really smart move could also be making the switch from petrol power to electric or battery power. After all, these days batteries are more efficient than ever, so it’s a great time to jump on the ‘electric’ bandwagon. Even better still a robotic lawn mower could proove to be even more efficient, with several models planning an exucuting the most economical route around the garden to ensure no effort is wasted.
To put things in perspective (and just because it’s quite interesting) here are a few facts about the effect that using a lawn mower can have on the environment:
- Using a petrol lawn mower for just half an hour is equivalent to driving 20 miles
- Every year lawn mower engines across the globe burn enough petrol to fill a typical sports stadium 7 times over
- Roughly 2.5% of this ends up simply spilled on the ground
If using a petrol lawn mower is a necessity, then besides trying to be quicker and more economical about your mowing sessions, it’s always worth giving your mower a maintenance overhaul. Simple things like having a clean air filter and properly sharpened cutting blade can improve the performance of a lawn mower to a surprising degree.
And as for watering lawns, we often scoff when hose pipe bans come into force during the summer but consider this, up to 60% of all the water consumed by households is used keeping lawns fed during the summer. If you know that a large part of you water bill goes on your lawn then it might be worth considering whether your lawn needs quite so much to drink, and if it does you might want to change your turf to a more water efficient grass species.
