The Deafening Sound of (What Feels Like) A Thousand Leaf Blowers

Dear Community,

I woke up this morning to the deafening sound of (what it felt like) a thousand leaf blowers. I live in a neighborhood of mostly old, white people. It is the neighborhood that resonated the most with me 11 years ago, when we moved here. I wanted to be close enough to work to be able to take the scooter or walk, because this is how we did it in the old country. We walked everywhere.

In the meantime, in the 11 years my family and I lived in this neighborhood, a whole bunch of things happened in very quick succession: first, I had all sorts of accidents (a severely sprained ankle, a broken pelvis, a concussion), I lost my sleep, then I started feeling like I was drowning and if I didn’t get out of the “health care” system (I call it health care in quotes, because it is way more like  sick care system, than health care), I attended my first functional medicine conference, I quit my job with Bay Endocrinology, I opened my own practice (Ideal Endocrinology), the pandemic started, I  signed up to become a certified psychedelic guide, I started marinating the world of entrepreneurship and consciousness research.

There were a few moments when the interconnectedness of all life on Earth became clear, when the fact that every thought, every action, every word counts. I didn’t grow up religious, or believing in any God. As a matter of fact, in my home, people who believed in God were mocked and belittled (maybe I will elaborate on the spiritual trauma that my family encountered at the hands of the Communistsin another newsletter). But  somehow, in this process of my searching to understand the meaning of life, I ran into a few concepts.

The first concept: that we are all interconnected. That us, as humans, cannot live in a vacuum. That we depend, for our survival, on all the plants and animals that populate the Earth. We are not the center of the universe, but part of it. Somehow, in the process of making our own lives better, we kind of forgot how important every one else is. The soil, the worms, the pollinators, the birds, the animals. It’s almost like our ego (the one that got us this far, to live comfortably in our air-conditioned houses) became self destructive, and forgot that humans can’t possibly live outside of the ecosystem, that the care of the ecosystem is more important than anything, if we were to survive as a species.

It might seem like a minor thing and an unavoidable  inconvenience of  modern life to wake up to the sound of leaf blowers. But it is not. It is a reflection of the lack of consideration that we have for our environment.

Have you ever thought about the energetic cost of using leaf blowers? Have you ever thought about the cost of maintaining the lawn, and how the pesticide use over hundreds of thousands of lawns is poisoning the water and killing the trophic chain of life?

Yesterday, at the local gym,  I ran into and had a long conversation to a neighbor, a very nice woman, who is also a physician. Theoretically, physicians are some of the most highly educated professionals, specifically in the realm of health. Since her and I live in the same neighborhood, we have many overlapping relationships and realities. One of my ongoing sorrows is that the Home Owners Association is occasionally sending me letters regarding our lawn maintenance and also most recently, they’ve been having issues with my planting of native shrubs in the front of my home. (Even though Maryland law protects homeowners' rights to plant native plants, thanks to the 2021 House Bill 322.  This House Bill prevents HOAs from imposing "unreasonable restrictions" on low-impact landscaping like native, pollinator, and rain gardens, preventing them from forcing turf grass lawns instead). In the process of explaining my reasoning to my very well meaning neighbor, it became very clear that she had absolutely no clue about the impact of lawn maintenance on the environment, the destruction of the eco system perpetuated by the use of pesticides and the wasteful and damaging use of energy for lawn maintenance.

Let's dive a bit deeper into the history of lawns:

As Americans, (I am an American citizen, an honor that I received as an "alien of extraordinary ability") we didn't always have a love affair with our lawns. In fact it wasn't until the industrial revolution that lawns became practical for most Americans. Lawns were seen as a luxury expense for only the wealthy who could afford grounds keepers to maintain the fine bladed plants using scythes. Not everyone wanted cattle or sheep grazing in the front yard to keep the green stuff at a manageable height as did Woodrow Wilson while occupying the White House (in an effort to draw attention to what could be done to free up men to fight and help with shortages of wool during World War I). The wool was auctioned off for $100,000 and given to the Red Cross. Speaking of presidents, early Presidents Washington and Jefferson both used sheep to keep their home lawns at manageable heights.

Green, weed-free lawns so common today didn't exist in America until the late 18th century. Instead, the area just outside the front door of a typical rural home was typically packed dirt or perhaps a cottage garden that contained a mix of flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

In England, however, many of the wealthy had sweeping green lawns across their estates. Americans with enough money to travel overseas returned to the U.S. with images of the English lawn firmly planted in their imaginations. Try as we might, it wasn't as easy to reproduce a beautiful English lawn. After all, they couldn't just run down to their local hardware store and pick up a bag of grass seed. Grasses native to America proved unsuitable for a tidy and well-controlled lawn, and our extreme climate was less than hospitable to the English grass seeds.

And now the data:

NASA scientist Cristina Milesi estimated using census data, satellite images, aerial photographs, and computer simulations that turf grass is the single-largest irrigated crop in the United States" which begs the question what is the environmental cost? When we use three times as much water to irrigate our lawns than to provide water for corn it is obvious we, as a nation, have a serious problem.

Lawn care in the United States is big business - while estimates vary a 2002 Harris Survey suggests as a nation we spend $28.9 billion yearly.

To put that into a personal perspective that translates into approximately $1,200 per household.

No matter how attached you are to your lawn it's important to understand that between 50-70% of the United States residential water is used for landscaping - most of it to simply to water lawns. That 50-70% of our residential water translates into about 10,000 gallons of water per summer per 1,000 square foot lawn.

The Environmental Cost of US Lawns

If using between 50-70% of our residential water to simply water our lawns isn't frightening enough then consider the following facts from the Safer Pest Control Project:

• 78 million households in the United States utilize garden pesticides

• $700 million is spent annually on pesticides for lawns in the US

• 67 million lbs of synthetic pesticides are added to lawns in the US each year

• We use three times as much pesticide on our lawns per acre as we do on our agricultural crops

We aren't just wasting water, a limited commodity, we are also literally poisoning our environment. By spreading the toxins found in common garden pesticides we are doing an amazing amount of ecological damage.

The damage caused by US turf grass isn't limited to pesticides, as a nation we use over 58 million gallons of gasoline when mowing our lawns. At $2.75 a gallon, thats $159,500,000 dollars worth of gasoline.

A single lawn mower can create as much pollution in one hour as a car driven for twenty miles.

Lawn mowers aren't the only environmental threat - the ever present leaf blower expels about twenty six times the carbon monoxide and forty nine times the particulate matter of a new light-duty vehicle.

What we, as homeowners can do to minimize the environmental damage that we do via lawn care (THE SOLUTIONS):

Alternatives to synthetic fertilizers include:

• Use organic fertilizers

  • While they still release nitrous oxide, the manufacturing process does not contribute to CO2 emissions.

• Let lawn clippings decompose on the lawn

  • This will benefit the lawn, and also ensure that the clippings will not go to landfills, where they could break down and release methane. 

• Improve the quality of your soil:

  • Pick grass that works well for your particular environment

    • For example, there are cool-climate grasses, and warm climate grasses, grasses that are hardier than others, and grasses that can do well without sunlight

  • Apply compost or topsoil to the top layer of your soil in early spring, about ¼ to ½ inch with a rake

    • Start a natural compost system

• Don’t mow your lawn too often

  • Allowing the grass to grow more gives it the opportunity to form a stronger root system

Cornell University’s College of Agriculture & Life Sciences offers a useful program that instructs homeowners on how to transform their lawns, called Lawn Care: The Easiest Steps to an Attractive Environmental Asset. The general idea is to limit the amount of grass and the amount of maintenance associated with it. This organization and others recommend:

• Replacing grass with alternatives

  • In drought prone areas, this may look like xeriscaping, which means replacing large areas of grass with native plants that do well in drought, such as succulents. 

  • Using more handscape materials, like rocks and gravel

  • Using mulch

  • Planting perennials, annuals, and groundcovers, such as mosses, ferns, and wildflowers

• Generally introducing more native plants to the landscape

  • Shrubs and trees have high carbon capturing abilities

  • Natural species improve the health of an environment by increasing biodiversity where monoculture makes it unstable

  • Additionally, these plants help create a safe haven for endangered species, like butterflies and honey bees

• Leaving the lawn to its own devices

  • This means less mowing and less irrigation 

• Starting a garden

  • As the agricultural complex has been exposed as a major contributor to climate change, homeowners can reclaim the benefits of fresh, nutrient rich foods by planting Climate Victory Gardens

Again, why I am having such an interest in this and talking about this? Because soil health is directly related to our physical and mental health. Not only related to, but essential for.

And, if we care about our health and the health of our children and grandchildren and generations to come, we should consider caring more about the soil, the pollinators, the damage we do with our lawns than how our lawn looks.

I believe that in a generation or so, the same way indoor smoking has been outlawed in public places, so lawns will be outlawed.

What do YOU think? How are YOU treating your lawn?

Would love to hear your opinion about this subject.