Quote:
Originally Posted by mdtoaz
I was wondering if anyone has experience/knowledge about synthetic grass. Lowe's carries a brand called Synth-lawn. We live in Tucson, AZ and would like to have a little patch of something green for a bocce ball court. We definitely don't want to plant grass - we had a hard enough time growing a nice lawn in Maryland, let alone in the desert.
I know that it's a great option for this area because it does not need to be watered like real grass, but I don't know about the manufacturing process - is it recycled materials, etc.
Anyone with some insight, please give me an opinion.  |
Most are made from 90% virgin material. They can use recycle material but it needs to be seperated down to the specifics of the product and thats not something US recycling is willing to do. Recyclers can sell the mixed material to PRC at higher prices because they need it to make cheap products to ship back tot he US. The little recyle material in it comes from other manufacturing waste that are not comingled.
Quality artificial grass has UV protection so it won't fade. The backing is from recyled waste of tire manufactures. It can be recyled IF your community does carpet recylcling. If there is no carpet recyling, it's going to a landfill.
How green depends on how and why used.
The manufacturing is green neutral. The energy and chemicals used to make fake grass is no more or less than commerical grass seed or sod production. Think of all the fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, diesel farm equipment, water, packaging equipment, trucking cost for grass seed production or a sod farm and fake grass uses no more.
The logistics of fake grass is NOT green compared to regular grass. The energy to ship an acre of fake grass compred to an acre of local sod or brand grass seed is huge.
Water use is minimal and may be less than anyother decorative surface. Real grass will use thousands of gallons a year where the fake grass needs no water. Think of the energy and chemicals to get water to your house and fake grass beats real grass hands down.
Chemical contamination is nill on artifical grass compared to the amount of chemical pesticides, fertilizers and other crap put on grass to keep it looking good. Those chemicals are not contained on your property but can contaminate water supplies miles and miles away. So ont hat, fake grass again beats real grass hands down.
Real grass does produce air, so it's by far greener in that area. Of course if the option is fake grass or dirt and rocks, theose don;t produce air neither so its equal in that area.
I think the reason may say fake grass is greener than real grass is because we all know the impact to produce a yard of artificial turf where depending on the person, they can be using ten times as much chemicals, thousands of times more water, and producing many times the yard waste to keep the real grass looking good.
You know how you would really be using the artificial turf and you can come to your own conclusuion about how it stacks up to real grass. If the concern the least harmful product for the enviroment while still providingt he surface ytiou need, artificial grass tops the scale. You can get real grass to come close or maybe beat fake grass on enviromental concerns if you are appraching it from a pure enviromentally firendly (no chemicals, natural rainfall, no fertilizers, etc) way of doing things. If you don;t think thats what you will be doing, sometimes man-made products are better for the enviroment than the real thing.
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