The grass isn't always greener...

Do you find that you are running out of good excuses when your parents ask you to mow the lawn? They will be surprised to hear that using a lawnmower for one hour pollutes the air as much as driving in a car for 350 miles!

Lawns can pollute in other ways, too. A lot of water is used to keep grass green...in fact, almost one-third of all household water use–more than 7 billion gallons per day–goes to watering lawns. And to make matters worse, we in the United States use 580 million gallons of gas for our lawnmowers, spend $5 billion dollars every year on fertilizers made from fossil fuels and use 67 million pounds of synthetic pesticides for our lawns! Convinced? Good, now here's what you can do:

1) Use an electric lawn mower. They produce less than 1% of the smog-contributing carbon monoxide that gas mowers put out and 1/9000th the hydrocarbons. However, they only produce 6 less pounds of carbon dioxide.

2) So, better yet, use a reel push mower like one of these. With no electricity costs, zero on-site emissions and a much smaller price tag they are a great option.

3) Water your lawn only in the morning or the evening. Water evaporates 8 times faster during the heat of the day!

4) Collect water from downspouts to water your lawn.

5) And finally, turning your yard into a backyard habitat is the best way to make your yard really green. But we'll save that for the next post. So check back in to learn more...