Archive for category Green Living

The Advantages of Artificial Grass

If you watch sports programming on TV then you’ve already seen artificial grass because it’s growing in popularity as a replacement for natural turf on a wide variety of playing surfaces.

Schools and Professional sports franchises around the globe are fast discovering that the more they look at it, the more reasons they see why it’s such an excellent alternative to natural grass.

Now another new and fast growing market for this incredible product though, is homes and businesses, where it’s also becoming fast known as an attractive and sensible alternative for natural turf.

Newer far more real looking artificial turf that employs advanced high-tech state-of-the-art yarn compositions made from super durable polyethylene and/or polyurethane fibre.

So then just what are some of the benefits you can expect if you decide to go with this product, instead of having natural grass planted around your home or business? After all, it is more expensive up front, so in the balance there must be pretty good reasons why so many people going for it.

Well for starters, it doesn’t need water and that on its own is a huge plus. Particularly if you live in area of the country that has metered water. The cost of metered water is only going to go up, and with so many areas of the US suffering from drought conditions too, it may be going up quicker than you realize.

So no water also means no irrigation system to install and maintain. No timers and no sprinklers also mean that if you live in a humid climate, you don’t have the constant sprinkling of your lawn adding to the humidity problem around your home.

Then there’s no lawn maintenance, no lawn mower, no lawn clippings, no raking, no blower, or if you have the work done for you, no bills to pay. Also no noisy maintenance people working around your home or business during the day. You see, artificial turf looks great all day every day.

As a matter of fact artificial grass looks great year-round. You’ll have a fresh bright green mid-summer lawn even in the darkest months of winter. All done using absolutely no fertilizers or chemical products that are always a hassle to use, and all too often find their way into your local watershed.

Synthetic ground cover also means no breeding habitat for pesky critters like insects, gophers, snakes and “whatever else” likes to live in natural grass.

Now in some areas of the country this alone is a real plus. Particularly in areas where venomous snakes are something that home and business owners have to be concerned with.

This type of synthetic ground cover also drains so much better than a water holding natural lawn. In fact before it’s even laid down, the ground is graded to shed water and any low areas that may be potential problems can have a drain installed in them.

This also of course means that people can walk right across it, even right after a rainstorm. No problem.
Lastly the final benefit is that you don’t need to have a green thumb to have a great looking lawn all year around when you opt for artificial grass.

Your lawn will be one of those bright green healthy looking lawns that people like yourself have always pointed out and admired when you drove by.

Water Shortages

Water is life. Of all the resources in the world, H2O is the most necessary, and the most often taken for granted. One can live for up to 30 days without food, but humans will perish in three days without H2O. While we live on a blue planet, 75 percent covered in H2O, only three percent of that is fresh H2O, and over two-thirds of that is frozen in the form of polar ice caps. Less than one percent of the world’s H2O is usable fresh H2O.

Potentials for Shortages
Britain’s chief scientific advisor, John Beddington said that by 2030 the world’s fresh H2O consumption will increase by 30%. He predicts rioting and international migration as people flee drought stricken areas.

Importing and Exporting Water
Modernization has lead to the deliberate movement of H2O from one country or area to another. Water from the Great Lakes is being sold to Japan, and has been for years. China is importing H2O from Malaysia, and the UK is depends on imported H2O for two-thirds of their H2O supply. What effects could import and export of water have on the world’s climate? John Beddington is calling for a global response, with global policies and governance.

Measures to Avert the Crisis
• Conservation - The average American use 150 gallons of water daily, but only drinks about a half a gallon of that water. The rest is used on toilet flushes, showers, lawn watering, dishwashing, and washing the car. If each of us saved just 20 or 30 gallons a day, by using water more cautiously it would make a huge difference.

• Desalinization - Desalinization is a costly process of turning salty sea water into safe drinking water. Many countries in the Middle-East depend on desalinization for up to 70 percent of their water. In the United States water can be desalinized at a cost of approximately 46 cents per cubic meter. The major pitfalls of desalinization are cost, increased fuel consumption, and overconcentration of sea water, caused by returning brine to the ocean while keeping the water.

• Recycled Water - Using processed wastewater from toilet flushes for industrial, irrigation, and even toilet flushes makes a lot of sense considering the potential for crisis in the future, and the expense and potential ecological repercussions of other methods. Wastewater is still 98% water. It should be remembered that there is no new water in the world, and all of it has been here since the dawn of time. It has been used and sent out as waste water many times, through the kidneys of the dinosaurs, and of course more recently as well. Recycling water is not new, just more systematic than in the past.