Mowing your lawn for half an hour puts out more emissions than driving a late model car 1000 miles! Now imagine pushing that late model car from here to say Montréal and back and breathing in 1000 miles worth of fumes! Use of lawn pesticides have quadrupled since Rachel Carlson wrote Silent Spring. Use of pesticdes in suburbs like Westchester is triple that used in conventional farming.
Luckily we live in the land of alternatives so cleaning up the yard easy..
Try reducing the number of times you mow each summer. If you mow every other week instead of every week you reduce your exposure to particulate matter, SO2, and a host of combustion by products by 50 %. 3 weeks reduces your exposure by 67%. The lawn will be longer which creates better habitat and produces more oxygen. Consider the possibility of a new esthetic, what would it be like if suburbanites furrowed their brows at short cropped lawns.
Photo by matthewbridges
