• Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    What’s the environmental impact of fake grass? Isn’t it better than real grass because it doesn’t need water or pesticides? (I don’t have a grass yard or lawn so I don’t know what upkeep a fake one entails. My neighbor has one in their backyard, which basically replaced dirt with a few patches of grass from the prior owner. We have concrete from our prior owner. )

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      You don’t have to put pesticides on your grass you know you can just leave it.

      It gets watered by the rain, and the rain falls on it regardless of if it’s real or fake or concrete. So it isn’t a waste.

      Anyway it allows for drainage. One of the reasons we get so much flooding nowadays is because we’ve concreted over everything.

    • mackwinston@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      A lawn needs neither of these things, or if you choose just to have plants instead (which we did in our small garden) then that needs neither water nor pesticides. Occasionally I might pull by hand some straggly stuff, or use a small electric strimmer to tidy things up (e.g. the garden path when stuff starts growing between the paving).

      Unlike artificial grass, and even though my garden is small, this spring I had two birds nesting, I see quite a lot of bees and butterflies, and I just let the ants get on with doing their business. Pesticides and herbicides are never used. If there’s a plant I don’t want growing somewhere I can pull it up manually. There’s no need for the area to be super manicured.