April 21st

By Mutt Mulligan

Lawns and the Fight Against Climate Change

A recent SafeLawns Blog posting reminded us of two important things:

One, lawns help capture and store carbon.  The blog says: “Lawns, as it turns out, can be a boon in the fight against climate change and water pollution.”

Now, just as TurfMutt points out, you need to be mindful of how much water  you use to keep lawns growing. 

But, the blog points out a further interesting fact about clippings:  “NASA researcher Christine Milesi found out that all that turf captures quite a bit of carbon from the atmosphere, a whopping 37 billion pounds per year if you mow high and leave the clippings on the surface (two key elements of organic lawn care).  If you remove the clippings, that number drops by nearly two thirds, and if you send the clippings off to the landfill, then there decomposition actually makes climate change worse because it produces methane which is even worse than carbon dioxide.”

So, we continue to urge you to leave clippings fall where they may and for more information on the study and especially the carbon section, read here.