Over 40 million acres of the United States are covered by lawns with 2% of land occupied by turf grass and $30 billion spent on lawn care. Lawns are indicators of socio-economic status in America and the culture surrounding lawns has created a unique but extreme threat to climate change and our carbon footprint. From the water to the fertilizers and equipment needed to maintain a well-kept, Americanized lawn, the toll on the environment is serious.

Most lawn equipment uses gasoline and has two-stroke or four-stroke engines. Thirty percent of the fuel in two-stroke engines don’t combust completely, releasing high levels of exhaust emissions. While four-stroke engines are less harmful than two-stroke, one study found that a four-stroke engine running for an hour released emissions equivalent to a vehicle traveling for 500 miles. Five percent of total emissions in the United States are from lawn equipment with an average of 800 million gallons of fuel used annually and 17 million gallons of that spilled.

Interested in having a more environmentally friendly lawn? Here are a couple tips:

1. Switch to electric lawn equipment! While electric equipment can cost more up front, you will save over time by not having to maintain fuel. Electric lawn equipment is powerful, compact, and easy to use.
2. Rather than planting turf grass that creates an artificial environment and stunts biodiversity in the local ecosystem, grow native plants on your lawn. Native grasses, flowers, and ground-cover plants require little maintenance and allow the local ecosystem to thrive.

Recycle Utah, your community, non-profit drop-off recycling center, provides these weekly tips. Visit their website for more information — www.recycleutah.org.

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Packing peanuts, food containers, coffee cups, and packaging material all contain what you might know as Styrofoam. In fact, Styrofoam is a Dow company trademarked name for extruded polystyrene foam (XPS) that’s used for insulation purposes. The foam we often encounter when we order large items online or pick up takeout for dinner is expand polystyrene foam (EPS).

Polystyrene is a type of plastic that begins in the manufacturing process as small synthetic beads. The beads are heated and molded to form several types of commonly used plastic, including CD cases, smoke detectors, disposable razors, and other hard plastics. During the heating process, the beads can be expanded and molded to form EPS and XPS foam. EPS and XPS foam are expanded between 40 and 80 percent of the original volume and consist primarily of air. It’s inexpensive to manufacture, simple to transport due to its lightweight nature, and is a semi-durable and reliable product. So, what’s the problem?

EPS and XPS foam are notoriously difficult to recycle due to our municipal recycling infrastructure. In the landfill, it can take around 500 years for it to decompose. When EPS and XPS foam end up in our natural environment, it leaches into our water and soil systems as component cells. The health risks of the component cells in our natural environment are daunting with some experts suspecting them to be carcinogenic.

To help prevent the pollution of EPS and XPS foam in our environment, use alternative products to foam, encourage your local and online businesses to switch to paper products, and vote for policies and politicians that will create bans of foam in your community.

Recycle Utah, your community non-profit drop-off recycling center, provides these weekly tips.  Visit their website for more information – www.recycleutah.org

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Climate change is here and it’s terrifying. From natural disasters, sea level rise, air and water quality, food scarcity, to ecosystem collapse, climate anxiety is paralyzing, and the future can seem hopeless. Media outlets prey on this collective fear, often focusing on negative stories with clickbait titles. Nevertheless, it is vital for us to be informed of the effects of climate change, to understand the privilege we have as a community currently safe from major impacts of climate change, and to remain hopeful as we face the climate crisis at large.

Hope is often dismissed as an inadequate tool in creating change, but if we don’t have hope and we believe we’ve already failed, then we will. Our opportunity to change before we’ve created irreversible damage is closing, but we still have time. If you’re struggling to find hope, here are some tips:

1. Involve yourself in your community! Experiencing the world through clickbait media is lonely and daunting, but in reality, a lot of amazing people and organizations are doing the hard work to combat climate change. Volunteer for a local organization focused on sustainability, write to your legislators, vote, and surround yourself with people who are passionate about creating a better future.
2. Find media outlets that promote the good with the bad, like thecooldown.com that reports on sustainable solutions happening throughout the world.
3. Close your eyes and visualize! Practice imagining a future you want to live in, and the steps needed to create this future. For inspiration, read Robert Costanza’s “Visions of Alternative (Unpredictable) Futures and Their Use in Policy Analysis.”

Recycle Utah, your community non-profit drop-off recycling center, provides these weekly tips.  Visit their website for more information – www.recycleutah.org

The post Green Tips: Hope in the face of climate change appeared first on Park Record.