Is My Lawn Bad for the Climate?

How to Save a Planet

Gimlet

Science, News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

America loves its lawns. Altogether, grass lawns in the U.S. cover an area the size of Georgia. So, what does that mean for the climate? And can we do better? To find out, we’re joined by lawn expert and social ecologist Dr. Peter Groffman. He shares some surprising findings from his 20 years studying lawns and the people who tend them. Plus, we address one listener's pet peeve: artificial turf. And we share tips on how to make your yard as climate-friendly as possible. Calls to Action: 1. Check out the Guide to Passing Wildlife-Friendly Property Maintenance Ordinances from the National Wildlife Federation. 2. Ready to tear out your grass lawn? Your state’s university extension service or a local non-profit probably have tips. See examples here from Maryland and Colorado. Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram. This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Daniel Ackerman. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis, Anna Ladd, and Rachel Waldholz. Our supervising producer is Matt Shilts. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Our intern is Janae Morris. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Peter Leonard and Emma Munger. Our fact checker for this episode was Claudia Geib. Special thanks to Dr. Cristina Milesi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to How to Save a Planet, I'm Daniel Ackerman, a producer on the show, and I'll
0:06.6	be hosting today, and this is the show where we talk about what we need to do to address
0:11.1	climate change and how to make those things happen.
0:25.8	Here at the show, we recently got a voicemail from a listener named Meg in Colorado, and
0:30.5	she was asking about something a lot of you ask us about, lawns.
0:34.7	Specifically, what should we do about lawns in an increasingly hot and drought-prone world?
0:40.1	Hi, Alex and the rest of the How to Save a Planet team, long-time listener here in Colorado.
0:46.4	And in Colorado, along with many other Western states, we are currently experiencing a drought.
0:53.0	And because of this, I've been seeing this disturbing new trend where people are replacing
0:58.5	their dried up lawns with turf, plastic turf.
1:03.0	And I was hoping you could maybe dig into this and figure out just how bad replacing
1:09.1	your lawn with turf is.
1:11.2	It's one of the most common questions we get from listeners.
1:14.1	Some variation of, I care about climate change and I have a yard, what should I do with
1:19.3	it?
1:20.4	And while this might sound kind of trivial, it's actually really important.
1:24.9	Altogether, grass lawns cover more of the U.S. than any other irrigated crop.
1:30.4	If you dragged all the lawns together in one place, you could cover the state of Georgia.
1:35.5	So could all that land be put to better use?
1:38.4	Could we grow plants that would capture more CO2 than grass or grow things that don't
1:42.8	need as much water?
1:44.5	Now grass lawns are getting a lot of hate these days, maybe because they're so visible
	...

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