Boston bans fake grass in parks; how to know what’s better.

Sustainability is about making everything better, not trading off one “bad” for another. Fake grass is perfect example of a suboptimal solution. Artificial grass doesn’t need as much water (you still have to hose it off occasionally) or any fertilizer. But it’s made from plastic with toxic, forever-chemicals.

So Boston is one of a growing number of communities putting the breaks on more.

Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, has ordered no new artificial turf to be installed in city parks, making Boston the largest municipality in a small but growing number around the nation to limit use of the product because it contains dangerous chemicals.

All artificial turf is made with toxic PFAS compounds and some is still produced with ground-up tires that can contain heavy metals, benzene, VOCs and other carcinogens that can present a health threat. The material also emits high levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and sheds microplastics and other chemicals into waterways.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/30/boston-bans-artificial-turf-toxic-forever-chemicals-pfas

How to know if something is sustainable

Sustainable solutions are ones that simultaneously move toward of all four principles of a sustainable society. At a minimum, solutions move one principle forward without making any of the others worse. What are those principles?

Virtually all the problems of our world are a result of breaking one or more of these design principles.

The Natural Step based in Sweden pulled together scientists to tease out the principles for a sustainable society.

https://thenaturalstep.org/approach/

The precise language of the principles is important but hard to remember, so I developed a shorthand way to recall them. Four words represent four things we need to stop doing:

• MOVE: Move materials from the earth’s crust into nature (fossil fuels, metals, minerals) faster than nature can redeposit them.
• MAKE: Make things that nature can’t handle (non-biodegradable, toxic materials).
• TAKE: Take from nature faster than it can regenerate (forests, fisheries, aquifers)
• HURT: Hurt communities ability to meet their needs (factors supporting social capital like health, fairness, influence, meaning.)

Virtually all the problems of our world are a result of breaking one or more of these design principles.

So let’s analyze artificial turf through these four principles. It only makes one principle better but undermines the other three.

• MOVE: It’s made from fossil fuels.

• MAKE: It doesn’t require ongoing doses of herbicides, but it’s made with toxic chemicals that leach and off gas from non-recyclable, non-biodegradable plastic

• TAKE: It does reduce water use. Check!

• HURT: By off gassing and leaching toxic chemicals it can make us sick. It also increases the heat island effect and excessive heat can kill people and contribute to more air conditioning use.

Finding a more sustainable solution isn’t always easy. But these principles help you find better solutions. For example, at our house in Durango, the developer had planted grass from one end of the property to another. A lot of it was in bad shape when we moved in. I was not willing to dump inches of water weekly on the whole property to keep it alive.

Wildflowers in backyard, partially shaded. Seeds from High Country Gardens.

So we noticed where the grass liked to grow on its own with no irrigation. It thrived in shady spots, especially those that benefited from runoff. Elsewhere, we now have two big areas with wildflowers that can grow with little or no water along with a well mulched vegetable garden. (The mulch comes from an arborist who trims trees. Many arborists or utility crews are happy to drop off their chipped wood when they are in your area rather than taking it to the dump.) We made two rain gardens in soggy low-lying areas to collect and infiltrate stormwater.

Front yard, full sun

And we’ve planted a chitalpa, a drought-tolerant, fast growing tree, to shade more of the remaining grass. The tree attracts hummingbirds and bees, and we hope the shade will encourage the grass to survive in our backyard without irrigation.

This solution provides more habitat for insects and sequesters more carbon in the soil while saving water. We have two rain barrels and capture kitchen rinse water to put on the plants. I did hand water some areas during our dry spring to get seeds started but since then, the monsoonal rains have been adequate. And it’s so much more interesting to look at than a big square of grass.