Grundlage t1_je57y3l wrote on March 29, 2023 at 2:36 PM

Reply to comment by LostOldAccountTimmay in Yo! When’s your first grass cut gonna happen this year? by Pancake108

Gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is responsible for 24-45% of non-road carbon emissions, about half of other forms of air pollution, and 4% of total C02 emissions. Gas-powered mowers and leaf blowers are among the least energy efficient, most polluting combustion engines in existence. Operating a lawnmower for an hour produces the same amount of emissions as driving a typical car for 500 miles.

That's not taking into account the harmful effects of monoculture grass lawns on native species and pollinators anyway. Lawns are truly one of our dumbest hobbies.

LostOldAccountTimmay t1_je59p1i wrote on March 29, 2023 at 2:48 PM

I hate my lawn and I wish it was clover. Or gravel

Grundlage t1_je5a5si wrote on March 29, 2023 at 2:51 PM

r/nolawns has some great resources! Clover is wonderful.

enemy_of_your_enema t1_je5hffh wrote on March 29, 2023 at 3:38 PM

Clover is ok. It is just as invasive and non-native as grass. At least it sometimes has some flowers, but they often get mowed off anyway. They have a whole writeup about it in that sub.

ScareJessica2Death t1_je5hdf5 wrote on March 29, 2023 at 3:38 PM

You could make that happen.

rocketcrotch t1_je752y1 wrote on March 29, 2023 at 10:02 PM

Lay a tarp over it on a hot day, then rake it out and seed with clover. If that's what you really want, it's honestly not too difficult to accomplish

LostOldAccountTimmay t1_je7v5k7 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 1:16 AM

It's 3/4 acre, so it would take a lot of iteration, but I wouldn't have expected it to be that easy.

rocketcrotch t1_je85q74 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 2:37 AM

An electric dethatcher might make it a bit easier; I can understand the reluctance to tackle that large of an area. The non-difficulty I was referring to was the game plan, certainly not the physical labor of the task

Excelius t1_je6xh09 wrote on March 29, 2023 at 9:09 PM

> Gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is responsible for 24-45% of non-road carbon emissions

Correction: Your link says that gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is responsible for 24-45% of non-road gasoline emissions. Not non-road carbon emissions.

There are only so many things that use gasoline besides cars, and of those things lawn equipment is the largest consuming category.

> Operating a lawnmower for an hour produces the same amount of emissions as driving a typical car for 500 miles.

Health impacting pollutants like VOCs, yes. Climate change causing greenhouse emissions, not even close.

The average vehicle on American roads gets about 25mpg, so that 500 mile trip is burning about 20 gallons of gasoline.

I've always owned electric lawn equipment so I'm honestly not sure what's typical, but I'd guess that most people aren't burning 20 gallons in their lawn mower in an entire year.