Environmental and Health Impacts of Artificial Turf a Review
I f your attention during the Women'south World Cup was on the pitch rather than the players, y'all might have noticed that the matches were all played on real grass. That was a difficult-won change, made after the U.s. team complained to Fifa that they sustained more injuries on artificial turf.
In private gardens, however, the opposite trend is happening: British gardens are beingness dug up and replaced with plastic grass. But this isn't the flaky, fading stuff on which oranges were in one case displayed at the greengrocer. Today's artificial grass is nearly identical to the real thing.
With products named after cute places – Lake District, Valencia – modernistic artificial turf mimics not just the mottled colouring and shape of grass blades, but the warm springiness of globe.
Unlike the grass itself, the market is growing. Dozens of specialist firms now market place fake grass as a replacement for garden lawns. U.k. sales surged during last year's record summertime temperatures, according to the industry periodical Hortweek, while a report by Upward Market Research valued the global market at $2.5bn (£2bn) in 2016 and forecasts a "staggering" rise to $5.8bn past 2023.
Andy Driver, sales and marketing director for the artificial turf supplier Evergreens UK, says that as bogus grass has become much cheaper and more than realistic, it at present appeals to a broad range of people: urban center residents with shaded gardens where grass doesn't grow well, or to rug urban rooftops and balconies; families with children or dogs who don't want a muddy mess; older or disabled people who struggle to maintain a garden; schools and nurseries where playgrounds go heavy apply.
For many people, he says, in that location is a social pressure to "keep up with the Joneses" by having a perfectly trimmed, light-green lawn all year circular.
Perhaps aware of another kind of social pressure, some firms pitch their products as eco-friendly alternatives.
For example, Imperial Grass says its environmentally friendly turf, chosen Eco-Sense, is recyclable ("in other words, cradle-to-cradle") and declares that it "has the expect and feel of natural grass, only outperforms its natural source of inspiration": "'Green' is a premium goal in our quest on how we can make our artificial grass more than sustainable. This starts at the commencement of the process, with the careful selection of the raw materials that are used to produce the grass blades."
But while the simulated grass might indeed be greener, at to the lowest degree in color, its ecology impacts are hard to gloss over.
Paul Hetherington, fundraising director for the charity Buglife, says bogus turf is far from an eco-friendly alternative to natural grass.
"It blocks access to the soil below for burrowing insects, such every bit solitary bees, and the ground above for soil dwellers such every bit worms, which will be starved of food beneath it," he says. "It provides food for absolutely no living creatures."
This is a particular business in view of the dramatic global decline in insect species. The UK is on class to miss its own targets for protecting its natural spaces, and has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows in a single generation.
It is not merely wildlife that artificial turf affects. The Commission on Climate change recommends rewilding a huge surface area of UK land and growing many more than trees to help tackle global heating past storing carbon. Not only does fake grass have no climate benefits, but producing the plastic emits carbon and uses fossil fuels.
The common practice of replacing soil with sand to provide a more stable bed for the fake grass also releases fifty-fifty more than CO2 stored in the earth, according to David Elliott, chief executive of tree-planting charity Copse for Cities.
At that place is likewise the affair of microplastics: the tiny particles of plastic that have fabricated their way throughout the world, and are present in our food, water and even the air.
Evergreen United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland's turf is made mainly of polyethylene, with polypropylene and polyamide for some purposes. Driver claims the microplastics problem does not affect the bogus grass industry because it doesn't sell single-employ products. "Our products don't degrade, we've e'er not had it equally an issue, basically." He adds that products from legitimate firms arrange to standards set by the industry.
Madeleine Berg, projection manager at the environmental charity Fidra, counters that almost plastics are likely to contribute to microplastics through physical and chemical deposition, such as existence stepped on and exposed to constant sunlight. "You would be hard-pressed to say that you have created a product which doesn't shed anything," says Berg.
In that location are also growing concerns about the impact of the synthetic chemicals that are added to artificial grass on human health and the environment. The European union has been investigating specialist artificial turf used on sports fields for suspected carcinogens, and is considering banning intentionally added microplastics. While these are different products to those sold to dwelling house gardeners, Berg says bogus pitches are sometimes reused for landscaping.
And what happens to false grass when it reaches the end of its life in x-20 years?
Dissimilar Royal Grass, Evergreens UK doesn't market itself as eco-friendly, a term Driver calls "a little bit misleading", only he is keen to stress that his company's products tin can be recycled. Notwithstanding, this tin only be done at specialist plants in Europe and it is doubtful that many customers would become the extra mile.
Guy Barter, primary horticulturist at the Majestic Horticultural Lodge (RHS), says in that location is a place for artificial turf as an culling to paving slabs, gravel and particularly concrete, which is its own ecology nightmare. "Hard landscaping can be very expensive, and people fancy a bit of green in a small garden. We've even laid a chip [of artificial grass] ourselves.
"But I don't retrieve that for all but specialised purposes that it really compares with [real] grass. Not but does information technology not provide any of the environmental benefits of grass – like soaking upwardly moisture, home for insects, feeding birds, self-sustaining – its life isn't that long. It gets trampled on and quite soon looks poor. It can't be relaid or reseeded; it has to be rolled up, lifted and sent to landfill."
Castling concedes that the root of the problem is social pressure level for a perfect green lawn.
"In the mindset of the British public you lot haven't really got a garden unless you've got a lawn," he says. "And I think a lot of people are put off by lawns considering there's so much quite confusing technical speak effectually it like mowing, feeding, weeding, moss control and overseeding. A lot of people but aren't interested – they don't have time in their busy lives."
At that place are some environmental benefits to using bogus grass. Different a real lawn, faux grass doesn't need to be mowed – which some people do with electric or fossil fuel mowers – or watered, which is a serious consideration as the UK anticipates increasing water stress due to the climate crisis.
Nor does it require fertilisers or herbicides, some of which take been subject to huge controversy, to attain a uniform look.
But lawns can also be maintained without those negative practices and products, and the soil loss problem is real: the RHS' Greening Grey Britain survey has found a threefold ascent in the number of front gardens that take been paved over.
Castling too challenges the idea that artificial turf is maintenance-free, saying it even so needs to be cleaned of litter and moss growth, and some owners have only replaced mowing with vacuuming.
"There are better solutions that would give people more than pleasure than just looking out at this sheet of slowly degrading plastic," he says.
He suggests planting shady front gardens with tolerant shrubs, such as evergreen bushes: these provide greenery all yr round, demand little maintenance, suppress weeds, offer nutrient for wild animals and places for birds to nest, and give hedgehogs and frogs encompass to travel safely in urban streets. "Later all, we are supposed to be a nation of gardeners."
To Trevor Dines, botanical specialist for charity Plantlife, the popularity of bogus grass shows how disconnected we have become from the natural world. "Whenever I encounter artificial grass my heart sinks – more nature smothered by more plastic. Where once we were famed for our lawns, nosotros now opt for artificial, low-maintenance solutions.
"This is not just to the detriment of wildlife but to us, likewise; children can't make a daisy-concatenation on a plastic lawn."
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/02/turf-it-out-is-it-time-to-say-goodbye-to-artificial-grass
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