NASCAR's Tidy Track

Juan Pablo Montoya #42

Crashes during a NASCAR race usually means oil spills which endanger the professional drivers. Before the race can continue, the NASCAR officials clean the track with TIDE granular detergeant. Years ago, that would have meant phosophorus pollution from the watered down soap product but due to the Clean Water Act, detergeants no longer contain phosphorus pollutants.

What tickled me is how they put the detergeant on the oily track.  They used a garden fertilizer spreader. It did the trick! The race continued with Matt Kensath winning the Daytona 500.

Orlando Sentinel Targets Yard Crimes

Just in time for Earth Day, Orlando Sentinel's Kevin Spear shines a light on lawn maintenance misdemeanors that have felonious impacts on Florida's water quality.  Blowing leaves and grass clippings into storm drains or out into the street is against the lawn.  Sadly its a common practice among lawn maintenance crews and unknowing homeowners that doesn't have much repercussion from county and city officials.

How can you make a difference?

• Educate neighbors and your HOA board on stormwater BMP's.
• Hire only companies have employees who demonstrate strong knowledge and application of green practices.
• Never fertilize before a rainstorm, fertilize afterwards.

Synthetic Turf Isn't A Sin But It Isn't Beneficial Either

With more emphasis being placed on drought-tolerant plants, stormwater pollution, and expensive water bills, an estimated area of over 60 million square feet of synthetic turf was installed in the United States last year. That means popularity of 'fake grass' has increased 20% since 2006. This latest trend in hopeful water conservation has world-wide corporations looking for eco-friendly applications for their products and providing environmental research, critical to getting green products certified and acceptable to consumers.

This month, BASF, the world's leading chemical corporation, has proudly released their eighteen month study on synthetic turf's economic and environmental impacts versus traditional natural grass fields. The innovation giant's comprehensive research used eleven "eco-efficiency" categories such as energy, air, water, carbon emissions, and pollution. It is the first study verified by the highly regarded non-profit NSF International organization.

The study's comparisons between synthetic turf and natural grass are being touted as great news for the global environment, and very well may be, but we have to realize that the study is based on athletic fields, not residential lawns or entire developments. As with all environmental issues, there are implications in trying to recreate Mother Nature's earthly balance with Stepford Wives solutions.

The conundrum: Is synthetic turf better for the earth than natural grass?

The answer: Maybe in some applications but it depends on the use, amount, and maintenance.

Funny, but that's the exact answer to having an environmentally friendly landscape.

The history of synthetic turf started in the 50's and 60's with advancements made in carpet manufacturing. In 1966 AstroTurf® appeared on the market. Since then innovative processes have created a more "natural" turf product reducing previous abrasive and unattractive qualities for consumers. Now that it's much more attractive, more durable, it's becoming more acceptable in residential communities. But should it?

The Synthetic Turf Council has accumulated the positive research on artificial turf on its website. There is no doubt that with the increased popularity of worldwide sports, using natural turfgrasses in stadiums and sports arenas can be expensive. Higher maintenance of natural turf fields needed to achieve superior sport conditions does affect water quantity and water quality, not to mention excessive labor, time, weather hazards, chemicals, and budgets of academic sports teams and corporations.

The NSF International confirms BASF"s environmental study that synthetic grass for athletic fields can be less costly to maintain after its installation. But what enviromental impact does synthetic turf have before it becomes an athletic field? What resources does it take to make synthetic turf? How long will it last vs natural turfgrass? How will synthetic turf be disposed of when its not longer usuable?

Synthetic turf is derived from nylon and polypropylene, and is created by a tufting machine similar to technology used in carpet manufacturing. Binding for the bottom of the turf can be made out of any material used for carpet backing.

Watch a video on how artificial turf is made.

I couldn't find any studies researching the amount of energy and water that it takes to make an entire field of synthetic turf, but there are studies showing how much water is needed to make plastic bottles. If it takes more than five liters of water to make a plastic bottle that holds one liter of water, what should we assume it takes to make nearly 60,000 feet of a nylon football field?

One of the downsides of synthetic turf is the surface temperatures during the summertime. This University of Florida video shows that varying temperatures of 155 degrees to 100 degrees between natural grass, synthetic turf, asphalt and cement. Can you guess which one was the highest? The synthetic turf was highest at 155 degrees. The lowest was the natural grass temperature at 100 degrees. The heat index combined with green building could pose an issue with synthetic turf as vendors warn that they do not warranty any synthetic turf installed against reflective windows. With global warming and climate change concerns in the news, how could the summer temperature of millions of acres of artificial turf add to the heated debate?

After installation, synthetic turf customers are told to water down their lawn if it gets hot. That may not be often in Nebraska or Wisconsin, but in Florida that hot turf could happen every day ten or more months out of the year. How would you irrigate or clean an entire yard of artificial turf? With a water hose? Washing down 3,000 to 5,000 feet of nylon is quite a household chore, nevermind an extreme amount of water. I can't imagine too many customers keeping their irrigation systems after installing synthetic turf to water down the hot nylon surface daily or even being allowed to water it at all with current water restrictions? Mowing the lawn doesn't sound that bad looking at the alternative maintenance required for synthetic turf.

What is wrong with turfgrass anyway? It is a natural habitat for butterflies and skippers, moderates soil temperatures, and helps to reduce evaporation and runoff. Who is to blame for the massive use of water, chemicals, and maintenance for green acres of perfection? Certainly not the grass but our desire for perfect, no maintenance lawns. It's human behavior that is at fault.

The IMFA Foundation provides more sustainable benefits from turfgrass:

• Provides a natural, comfortable and safe setting for outdoor recreation.
• Releases oxygen and cools the air.
• Controls pollution and reduces soil erosion.
• Purifies our water supply by reducing stormwater runoff and controlling erosion from rain and wind.
• Can enhance curb appeal, adding as much as 15 percent to the value of a home, when well-maintained.
• Traps and removes dust and dirt from the air.
• Uses water very efficiently.
• Acts as a natural filter, reducing pollution by purifying the water passing through its root zone.
• On a hot summer day, lawns will be 30°F (-2°C) cooler than asphalt and 14°F (10°C) cooler than bare soil.
• The cooling effect of irrigated turf reduces the amount of fuel burned to provide the electricity to power air conditioners.
• A healthy lawn absorbs rainfall six times more effectively than a wheat field and four times better than a hay field.
• A sodded lawn will absorb greater amounts of rain than a seeded lawn, even after three years of growth.

Last month, I designed a renovation of a twenty year old, tired landscape. It included a cottage and border garden, terraces, and a new front lawn of zoysiagrass. It looks beautiful and will be low maintenance and water conserving because of the correct plants and overhauled water-efficient irrigation system. Costs were very reasonable. Within 15 minutes of unloading the flowers and ornamental shrubs, there were dozens of butterflies and skippers eagerly flitting from plant to plant around the yard. They seemed to come from nowhere. Each time I visit the house, the finished landscape always has butterflies floating around the flowers. After establishment, the landscape will last for years with little need of supplemental water, weekly mowings, or chemical use. There will be no need to ever look for a recycling plant or landfill to haul any of the plants or grass away if they want to change it.

At the same time as I was designing and installing my client's landscape, literally around the corner was a home having artificial turf installed. I have been by it many times, and have yet to see any beneficial life in the landscape. It looks green alright, but it looks fake. The sparkling synthetic turf glistens in the sun, and I'm sure the temperatures around the yard will be fine as we go into winter, but I'll be interested in seeing what it feels like with the temperatures in the heat of summer. The synthetic turf lawn will stay the same, no seasonal changes, always Stepford green. Word on the street is that it cost over $15,000. Of course, synthetic turf is not permanent, and will need routine maintenance like pulling the weeds out and cleaning, eventually needing replaced within ten years. That will come with an additional cost of hauling it away to a recycling plant or landfill. I wonder if this resident understood the complications of recycling 5,000 square feet of old, worn-out synthetic turf?

So while an argument can be made that synthetic turf is a smart choice for a company's bottom line and for the manufacturing corporations, there is no environmental benefit to the residential owner installing a synthetic turf except possibly to his lifestyle of boasting a perfectly green lawn all year round. Installing synthetic turf won't benefit the earth at all, unlike natural grass. It is an short-term artificial solution for a culture striving for instant perfection but without having responsibility of stewardship. It's a behavioral problem that only has its own long term implications when people stop taking care of their artificial turf. I agree with Todd Layt that man-made turf is an alternative to cement, not natural grass. There's nothing wrong with turfgrass if it's taken care of with best management practices. Let's use the eco-friendly grass that God gave us, but use it wisely and maintain it properly.

If not, what's next? Synthetic flowers?

More reading:

• How is nylon made?
• What products are made from oil?
• David Dymond's , member of the Florida Sod Growers Association, Letter To The Editor, Orlando Sentinel
• FAA guidelines and requirements on use of artificial turfs at airports.
• NYC Air Quality Reports of artificial turf fields, 2009
• How much water does it take to make latte?

NOTE: 
12/10/2011 - Further comments made by any artificial turf companies for the purpose of promoting their product and company will not be posted.  If you have a legitimate comment - go for it.
~ Teresa Watkins

Who's To Blame For Overfertilizing and Chemical Use in Landscapes?

Unfortunately human beings are reactionary, not pro-active when it comes to changing beliefs and behaviors. Creating a paradigm shift of acceptable practices in landscapes needs to have the combined efforts of continued education and regulations from multiple arenas. It requires a top down and a bottom up approach. Education of the public, commercial businesses, homeowner associations, do-it-yourself outlets, garden centers and nurseries, municipal, state, and federal regulators all need to work together in making sure their facts are accurate. Regulators must rely on unbiased science-based research while homeowners need to be savvy consumers. Organic chemicals versus synthetic chemicals when it comes to soil and stormwater pollutants from landscaping applications is not a moot point. When overused and misapplied, they both pollute and hurt the environment.

Municipal and county planning departments have to share the blame by regulating codes that require extreme amounts of landscaping for new homes and developments. Ordinances that call for excessive amounts of ornamental shrubs to obscure views, large caliper trees to provide immediate shade, large expanses of turf, planted on zero-lot-line properties, which after maturity are completely shaded by those large canopy trees are just a few examples. Planning departments need to understand that there is no one cookie cutter design for all properties. There are various soil types, sunlight conditions, and pH levels while plants need to have specific conditions to thrive. Certain turfgrasses under shaded conditons becomes sparse and stressed needing higher maintenance, more water, have more pest issues, which then require chemical applications, which then increases the need for more water, more maintenance, more chemicals. See the vicious cycle? Landscape architects can help educate by rejecting the "instant landscape" approach, design for the property conditions, and advise clients on the health and beauty of properties that grow to their mature size naturally within a normal time frame that won't suffer under the stress of chemical applications.

Mandated commercial instant landscaping.

2 Phoenix Canariensis palms, 10 double and triple headed Phoenix roebellini palms , 4 Wodyetia bifurcata palms, all in 50-foot row on narrow road.

Overplanted landscaped common area that now has to deal with dieback and insect issues from overpruning.

Builders and developers can be more pro-active in preventing the need for chemicals by not clearing away native soils, wildflowers, and habitat that is already established, so that commercial businesses or future homeowners don't have to worry about extreme maintenance.

Pasture for commercial sale full of native dotted horsemint that will probably be bulldozed to allow for construction with landscape architects trying to find the right natives to create a native landscape.

"Long Leaf" commercial park with no long leaf pines due to damaging pre-construction practices.

Community homeowner associations have a legitimate responsibility to their residents to maintain their community home values and security. Residents who complain about HOA covenants that require “Stepford” lawns don't recognize it was their choice to purchase a home in such a community in the first place. But that doesn't negate HOA's obligation to be reasonable and pro-active with local county resources such as Extension offices to ensure that their covenants do not restrict regional and state efforts to protect natural resources like water supply. HOA's can have beautiful communities and still follow best management practices. Even with environmentally friendly laws, homeowners that want to have natural landscapes are being harassed by well-intentioned but sometimes ignorant neighbors and HOA committees.

Homeowners who try to educate themselves by attending landscaping workshops are bewildered to find out that their homes were not landscaped and irrigated according to waterwise efficiency and for lower maintenance before they moved in? Whose responsibility should that be? Building and planning departments or to the homeowners themselves, who most likely don't have the money to fix the landscape or irrigation system after they've bought their home?

Homeowners who hire companies to maintain their yards need to know what the companies are actually doing on a weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly basis. One gentleman attending my workshop in one of Florida's friendliest hometowns complained that his "landscaping company just knocks on my door, has me sign the bill, and leaves." He said he didn't know what they did to his yard on a monthly basis. My response was that he just had too much money. Why didn't he know? What did he contract this company to do in his yard? Would he would take his car to an auto mechanic and just sign the bill and not know what he was paying for? Everyone who hires landscape maintenance companies should know exactly what practices are being done to their yard and why, but importantly, agree that it should be done.

Irrational fears about insects and maintenance misperceptions are costly to both the environment and to wallets. "Blow and mow" companies take advantage of this and frighten customers into expensive or unnecessary chemical applications. Pruning improperly and going from yard to yard without cleaning their equipment spreads epidemic fungal and viral diseases, and herbicide resistant weeds, ensuring that there will be problems that only stronger chemicals will take care of, again turning into a non-stop pollution cycle. This needs to be addressed by the consumer.

Landscaping businesses should be willing to think outside the box to educate and persuade their clients who don't have landscaping and horticultural knowledge that they don't always have to apply a chemical. Accredited reps should be able to come to Mr. Smith's yard, assess the health of the landscape. If there is nothing wrong with the yard, no need to do anything but congratulate the homeowner on his healthy landscape and tell them that the rep will be back in the contracted time frame to reassess it. If there is a pest issue or fertilizer need, there are appropriate fertilizers and chemicals, whether organic or synthetic, that could be used in the landscape. When applied according to label instructions and only when necessary, these chemicals do not harm the environment. Homeowners should not only demand this consultation but should be willing to pay for it. It takes an educated consumer to understand and trust this concept. But sadly, homeowners now not only demand these bad practices, but they are willing to pay for incorrect advice, improper pruning, and misapplications of fertilizers and chemicals, not for correct knowledge. The landscaping industry needs to change this perception and create verbal word of mouth reputations for doing best management practices.

Then there is the unknowing homeowners, aided by DIY's retail television commercials of "now's the time," to take the care of their own yards into their hands. It should be easy, if you know what you're doing and use the best management practices of "right plant, right place and reading instruction labels.

Homeower lollipopping which leads to dieback and diseases.

Improper planting for mature growth.

Homeowner placement of shade plant in full sun.

But usually weekend warriors are culpable of brutal pruning practices, such as hatracking crape myrtles in the wintertime, overfertilizing all year round, overwatering, and applying chemicals incorrectly. These same warriors seeing damage in their lawns, don't know if they have an insect issue or a disease. They don't read the fertilizer, herbicide, or pesticide labels. Abiding by the myth of "perfect landscapes," "more is better," and "it [weeds] needs to die instantly," homeowners apply chemicals in unnecessary and dangerous amounts. This leads to increased pollutants, more diseases, chemical-resistant pests, and necessary chemical banning. Protecting the environment from zealous do-it-yourselfers has become the government's responsibility.

What is the solution?

• There needs to be an agreed buy-in from both the government and consumers to fund environmental education programs at every level. Elementary through high school, public and professional, at all levels.
• Covenants, local, and county ordinances should make keeping the environment healthy easier. A higher maintenance landscape should be a choice that comes with a price. Higher water bills, higher maintenance costs, even stormwater mitigation fees.
• Homeowners need to determine what the pest problem in their landscape is in the first place. Is it a seasonal issue or is the insect still there doing the damage? They need to make use of the free resources that are available to them through their local County Extension offices or through land-grant universities' scientific research which is free to every person on the Internet or at their local library.

The EPA requires stormwater protection in most states, with Florida and California recently introducing new legislation on phosphates and nitrogen applications which will undoubtedly help with stormwater pollution. Other environmental issues with water and wildlife is the increased damage from pharmaceutical pollutants which I consider more critical than fertilizers. Developing better technology to clean water has to address pharmaceuticals in our surface waters.

Working together to provide the correct landscapes and efficient irrigation standards that doesn't restrict but enhances homeowners ability to maintain their yards with best management practices is the easiest way to start protecting our environment. Its up to landscaping industry to educate their clients more, even taking a stand to not allow customers to dictate bad management practices. Making sure that homeowners understand that everyone is responsible for their own watershed even if they don't live near a lake is crucial to our future water supply. Banning fertilizers and chemicals entirely will only increase human stubborness and resentment. When people realize that our future water supply is not only a right but a responsibility, it should make everyone more aware of what they do in the landscape affects it, but the landscaping and building industries have to provide the correct landscapes and effective irrigation technology to ensure success.

~ When one tugs at a single thing in nature,

he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ~

John Muir, 1838 - 1914, American naturalist

City planning department approved landscape.

Most of China's Water Polluted

Reuters is reporting that two-thirds of China's water supply is polluted.

Only 37.6 percent of 585 cities surveyed had air quality "indicating a clean and healthy environment," down 7.3 percentage points from 2005, the China Daily said, citing a report by the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

Thirty-nine cities, many scattered across the northern coal-rich province of Shanxi and China's northeastern rustbelt province of Liaoning, suffered "severe" air pollution, the paper said.

"The report also found that the ratio of quality water in the major urban areas, either for drinking or industrial use, had dropped by 7.24 percent," the paper said.
Two hundred cities had no "centralized sewage management system" and 187 had no garbage disposal plants, it said.

The government planned to have at least 70 percent of sewage and at least 60 percent of garbage treated effectively by 2010, but "the environment issue remains of serious concern and there is difficulty realizing the goal," the paper quoted the report as saying.

The report comes as the capital Beijing on Tuesday was shrouded in thick smog, which local media said was exacerbated by smoke blown into the city from crop burning in neighboring provinces.

On Monday night, an index measuring air pollution from Beijing's southern Daxing county read over 850 particles of "particulate matter" per square meter, which was eight times the norm, the Beijing News said.

You're Tired? Head To Fort Lauderdale Beach

Jeffrey Kofman, ABC correspondent heads to the beach and lets you in on a dirty secret. Lying on the bottom of the ocean are reefs that are just junk.

It’s a good thing sun lovers on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale can’t see below the surface. Because if they could the ocean view that lured them here might not be so seductive. Just seventy feet below the surface and a mile off shore, sits a man-made environmental disaster. An estimated two million tires littering the ocean floor.

It is one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” stories. More than thirty years ago someone came up with the idea of solving two problems at once: get rid of a lot of used tires and create a new reef for fish, coral and tourists.

It didn’t work.

Back in 1972 -- with government approval -- flotillas of boats headed off shore to heave tires into the ocean.

But hurricanes, waves and water currents jostled the tire piles. Fish and coral never took to them… instead this junk pile that was intended to create an artificial reef is destroying a natural reef.

There are similar dumps off the coasts of Texas and Virginia. And in North Carolina, where hundreds of tires from another deep sea dump were washed ashore in 1998 during Hurricane Bonnie.

This week the U.S. Navy began the massive cleanup job, using the underwater tire field to train novice divers in salvage and recovery. It will cost several million dollars and take several years to restore the ocean floor to the way it was before it became a dumping ground.

Matthew Hoelscher has the ugly pictures.

Known artificial reef issue since 2003.