Before paying big bucks for a geothermal heat pump, try a little insulation first. (Photo by Jennifer Dickert)
Architecture firms, engineering firms and other energy
auditors are getting a lot more business these days.
Lester Graham reports… it’s part of a plan to save
energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions:
Transcript
Architecture firms, engineering firms and other energy auditors are getting a lot more business these days. Lester Graham reports… it’s part of a plan to save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the goals of all that federal stimulus money is to make a lot of buildings more energy efficient. First step… get an energy audit. Finding out how much energy a building is wasting has meant a lot of business for people trained to do that kind of work.
Dan Jacobs is with the architecture firm A-THREE-C in Ann Arbor Michigan.
“It’s easily doubled for us in the last year and we’re looking for it to double again as we go into 2010.”
Dan Jacobs says there’s a lot of excitement about renewable energy such as solar panels and rooftop wind turbines … but most buildings waste a lot of energy… so he recommends:
“First thing they want to do is conservation.”
Insulating, replacing windows, and efficient lighting cut energy use. Energy that would still be wasted no matter what fancy renewable energy gadget is put on the rooftop.
After Carrie Zaenglein lost her home to a fire, she decided to build her dream home - made from straw. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
Dave Lanfear is building a company devoted to straw bale house construction. Straw bale homes are popular in the Southwest, but not in other areas of the U.S. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
Lanfear fills the wood frame with tightly packed straw bales. Next, the walls are coated inside and out with layers of clay plaster. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
The clay plaster on the walls seals out moisture but still allows the walls to breathe. That prevents mold and keeps the house sound. The house also gets high marks for fire safety. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
The big bad wolf gave straw houses a pretty bad reputation.
But it turns out straw bale houses are incredibly strong and
energy efficient. The century-old building material is making
a comeback as an eco-friendly choice for modern home
construction. And these homeowners aren’t afraid of a little
wind. One woman is even building a straw bale house in the
sometimes cold, blustery climate of the east. Joyce Kryszak
tells us her story:
Transcript
The big bad wolf gave straw houses a pretty bad reputation. But it turns out straw bale houses are incredibly strong and energy efficient. The century-old building material is making a comeback as an eco-friendly choice for modern home construction. And these homeowners aren’t afraid of a little wind. One woman is even building a straw bale house in the sometimes cold, blustery climate of the east. Joyce Kryszak tells us her story:
This does kind of start out like a fairy tale. On the edge of the industrial city of Buffalo, New York there’s an ordinary little village. It’s dotted with aging, modest houses.
Carrie Zaenglein used to live here. That is until she lost her village home to fire two years ago. But that didn’t frighten the quiet-spoken young woman away. Zainglein says it just gave her a chance to rebuild. Only this time she’s building her dream home out of straw.
“I’ve always been interested in green building and doing things the environmentally friendly way, so I figured while I had a chance to start over I would do it the way I wanted to do it,” said Zainglein.
But how to go about it? You see, straw bale houses are growing more popular in the southwest. But you won’t find straw house builders listed in the yellow pages of most eastern cities.
So, Zainglein did a little searching on the web and found Dave Lanfear. Turns out, he’s building a company devoted to straw bale house construction. And Lanfear doesn’t care how much he’s teased about it.
“Yeah, I hear the same kind of jokes, I think, the three little pigs… and the same type of questions, but I just have to laugh. Yeah, I hear them,”
Lanfear just digs right in and gets to work plastering Carrie’s two-story contemporary style house.
Lanfear says to do it right you have to get dirty. He fills the wood frame with tightly packed straw bales. Next, the walls are coated inside and out with layers of clay plaster. It’s made with clay dug right from the site. Lanfear says it’s very organic and sustainable. But he says it also withstands the test of time.
“There are homes in Nebraska they didn’t even know that they were straw bale – they were actually hay bale. The walls got open, they were doing repairs and they discovered this hay in there and it actually looked fresh and they were a hundred years old.”
He says that’s because the plaster seals out the moisture but still allows the walls to breathe. That prevents mold and keeps the house sound. It also gets high marks for fire safety. And because the wheat straw is a just a bunch of hollow tubes it creates the air space that makes it a good insulator. Virtually everything about the house is eco-friendly.
The house also has solar heat and power. And it’s made mostly with reused materials. Even the trees cut down to make room for the house were brought inside and used for the framing. And Zaingline says rebuilding on her same small lot near the city means she’s not adding to urban sprawl. She likes to think straw bale houses could be a trend.
“The difference you can make, even though you’re only one person. I think it’s important for everyone to make these changes even if their small.”
Zaingline says her little straw bale house stands up just as well as any house made out of sticks or brick. It might just stand up to the bluster of critics too.
Pam Dashiell is with the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development. The Lower 9th Ward is in the background. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
There are various green houses and developments in the 9th being constructed by several different groups - including GoGreen and the Make it Right Foundation. Note the solar panels, raised houses, and odd roof lines. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina
hit New Orleans. The city still
hasn’t figured out how to protect
itself. Most of the conversation
focuses on rebuilding the city’s
levees. But some people in New
Orleans are starting to think beyond
levees. They call their strategy
resilience planning. And they think
New Orleans can become America’s
leader in it. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina
hit New Orleans. The city still
hasn’t figured out how to protect
itself. Most of the conversation
focuses on rebuilding the city’s
levees. But some people in New
Orleans are starting to think beyond
levees. They call their strategy
resilience planning. And they think
New Orleans can become America’s
leader in it. Samara Freemark reports:
When Pam Dashiell moved back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, she couldn’t believe what people were saying about her neighborhood.
“People were saying, well, the 9th Ward should be a drainage ditch. There’s no way it can possibly come back.”
Dashiell is the co-director of the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development. And after the storm, she became one of the leaders demanding the city be built back exactly as it had been before. New houses put up wherever old ones had been knocked down. Social services restored to all neighborhoods. And most importantly, levees. Levees big enough and strong enough to protect the city from anything a hurricane could throw at it.
“That was the fundamental argument and discussion back then. That was the battle.”
But Dashiell’s thinking has changed over the past couple of years. The levees that were promised after Katrina still haven’t been completed. Dashiell says eventually she gave up on them and started looking for other solutions.
“You’ve got to move. You’ve got to go forward. At this point we are not protected. So we gotta act like that and deal accordingly.”
“Levees and stuff like that are great, but they’re not going to be the salvation of this area.”
That’s Marco Cocito-Manoc. He’s with the Greater New Orleans Foundation. They’re one of the groups involved in rebuilding the city.
“We can’t just lobby for bigger walls, higher walls. The truth is that New Orleans can never be sufficiently protected from flooding. So everyone has to adopt what in this area is a brand new mindset.”
Cocito-Manoc calls that new mindset “resilience planning”. That’s making small, local changes to help the city manage flood water, rather than trying to hold it back at all costs.
It’s a strategy that’s being implemented in the Lower 9th Ward by Pam Dashiell’s group and others. A lot of these groups have moved away from pushing for more levees. Instead, they’re building raised houses on higher ground, and making sure they’re properly weatherized. They’re perfecting evacuation plans, so when evacuations do happen, they’re quick and orderly. And they’re installing permeable surfaces and rain gardens to reduce surface water. These kinds of changes won’t prevent flooding, but they’ll limit the devastation that sometimes goes along with it.
Cocito-Manoc says measures like these could actually set an example for other cities that will face rising sea levels in the next century. Think New York, or Miami, or Boston.
“I know that it’s difficult to see New Orleans as leading in much. But I think this is really our opportunity to become a global center for learning how to cope with water, and use water as an asset rather than as something that threatens our existence.”
As for Pam Dashiell, her focus right now is on the Lower 9th Ward. I asked her how she imagined the future of her neighborhood.
“I would see rain gardens. Strong green infrastructure. I see a new sewer system. I see the lower 9th ward recognized as a community that helped lead the way to a more sustainable future. (Laughs) I got good dreams.”
The study found that differences in architectural style stuck out most, but after that, height.
(Photo source: Brendel at Wikimedia Commons)
There are some ugly terms used
to describe big, grandiose homes.
Critics call them “Garage Mahals,”
“starter castles,” or “McMansions.”
These insults are flung around
in towns where people worry big
houses are sapping the character
out of neighborhoods full of smaller,
older homes. Shawn Allee
met a researcher who hopes to tamp
down the heated rhetoric:
Transcript
There are some ugly terms used
to describe big, grandiose homes.
Critics call them “Garage Mahals,”
“starter castles,” or “McMansions.”
These insults are flung around
in towns where people worry big
houses are sapping the character
out of neighborhoods full of smaller,
older homes. Shawn Allee
met a researcher who hopes to tamp
down the heated rhetoric:
Jack Nasar studies city planning at Ohio State University.
He got interested in the term “McMansion” because it was used in his own neighorhood in Columbus.
“A realestate agent was befriending older people so that when they died she’d be able to get their properties, tear down the house, and then build a much larger house. I started to wonder whether this was happening elsewhere.”
Nasar says teardowns, and the insults used to describe them, are common in many towns. And some local governments are restricting how big these homes get or even what they look like.
Nasar says, with governments stepping in to the debate, there’s more at stake than just name-calling.
“You’re talking about controlling what goes on on somebody’s private property. So, you would want to have good evidence to use as a basis for that decision.”
Nasar recently studied just what it takes for a house to get big enough or different enough for people to say, “yuck” or hurl an insult like “McMansion.” Nasar and a research partner created computer models of streets with rows of houses.
For each test, they made most houses normal, but changed up something about one of them – stuff like the architectural style, the height, or maybe distance between the house and the street. Then, they showed these models to people.
“We had them rate these streets in terms of compatibility, we had them rate them in terms of visual quality or preference.”
Differences in architectural style stuck out most, but after that, height.
“The effect started to be most noticeable when the in-fill house was twice as large as the stuff around it. So, in terms of regulations, it suggests maybe a community could get by saying, ‘you could do a tear-down replacement that’s twice as big as what’s around it,’ but you wouldn’t let it get any larger than that.”
This is a controversial finding.
Some communities keep height range much lower than “twice as big” figure and sometimes they restrict width, too – something Nasar found doesn’t matter so much.
I thought I’d bounce some of his findings off someone involved in the teardown issue.
“This also was a demolition of a small home.”
Catherine Czerniak drives me around Lake Forest, a Chicago suburb. She’s the community development director, and she gets the praise or blame about how teardowns get done.
Czerniak says Nasar’s findings make sense, especially the idea that style matters most.
“We often say height and size aren’t necessarily the key roles -it’s how the design is done.”
But for Czerniak, there’s a hot-button issue Nasar did not measure.
Lake Forest has lots of tree-lined streets and people like how the trees obscure the houses.
“And really, the landscaping really defines the character of the community. Even the estates on the east side, were not there to shout from the street, here I am, look at me.”
To make the point she drives past a mix of old homes and replacements.
I can hardly tell which is which.
“As we go down the street, take note that even though there are some big homes back here, you still feel you’re in a country lane.”
Czerniak says Nasar’s research might quiet down some debates but people will always fight over specific details. After all, Nasar’s test subjects gave quick judgements on computer models.
She says, in the real world, critics spend years nit-picking every little thing they hate about a teardown replacement home and whether it’s going to ruin their neighborhood.
Brian Hickey runs Teardowns.com, a real-estate marketplace
for teardown properties. Some communities complain that
the teardown market encourages the growth of so-called
'McMansion' replacement homes that are seen as too large
and out-of-place for their neighborhoods. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Your home may be your castle,
but, for some people, too many
homes are as big and grand as
castles. Critics call these homes
‘McMansions,’ and they complain
they’ve ruined neighborhoods
filled with older, smaller houses.
The McMansion fad fizzled during
the real-estate bust. Shawn Allee looks at whether it could
return:
Transcript
Your home may be your castle,
but, for some people, too many
homes are as big and grand as
castles. Critics call these homes
‘McMansions,’ and they complain
they’ve ruined neighborhoods
filled with older, smaller houses.
The McMansion fad fizzled during
the real-estate bust. Shawn Allee looks at whether it could
return:
I head to a Chicago suburb called Hinsdale to understand the hub-ub about McMansions. Over the past twenty years, one in three Hinsdale homes got torn down to make room for mostly bigger ones.
Brian Hickey drives me past one-story brick and wood houses.
Then there’s a huge one, with stucco and Spanish tile.
Hickey: “This is an example of something where someone would go, this is more Florida-like.”
Allee: “It looks like it walked off the set of Miami Vice or something like that.”
Hickey: “Yeah.”
Bigger, mis-matched homes sprouted up in Hinsdale during the real-estate boom, and for some, Brian Hickey’s partly to blame.
He runs tear-downs dot com. Hickey finds and sells homes to tear down, and maybe replace with McMansions … or ‘replacement homes’ as he calls them.
Anyway, during the housing bubble, teardowns increased … and so did complaints.
Allee: “Some of the arguments I’ve heard against the teardown phenomenon is that we’re basically tossing perfectly good houses into landfills.”
Hickey: “See, that’s not accurate. To take some of these homes and bring it up to what people in this community would expect in terms of housing amenities, it doesn’t make sense to renovate when you can build new for less.”
The big-home trend faded recently, but if the soft real-estate market improves, you gotta wonder: will people build big again, or will they keep smaller, older homes?
Hickey thinks old homes might lose.
Hickey: “At some point a buyer simply won’t pay that price to live there.”
Allee: “In that one story …”
Hickey: “In that one story, two-bedroom, small kitchen – that the land will be where the value is.”
Some real-estate pros say Hickey’s right: people want big, and they’ll build what they want, where they want.
Others say, the game has changed.
Local governments in Dallas, Denver, and other cities are starting to regulate teardowns, like Hinsdale did.
(sound of a printer)
Robert McGinnis prints me 60 pages of Hinsdale’s zoning codes.
“Hot off the press, it’s still warm.”
McGinnis runs Hinsdale’s building commission. He says the code got up to sixty pages partly because of teardown complaints.
McGinnis: “Pollution issues, the loss of sunlight in some cases.”
Allee: “Loss of sunlight? What do you mean by that?”
McGinnis: “Some of these houses are so tall they end up physically blocking out some of the sunlight.”
McGinnis says it’s hard to stop teardowns – you can just delay or improve them.
“I would like to think, at some point, Joe Q. Public says, ‘I’d really like to live in Hinsdale, but I can’t afford to heat and cool a McMansion,’ so they’re going to look at building a smaller home.”
But McGinnis says this could be wishful thinking.
So, I thought I’d ask some Hinsdale homeowners about the small-home idea.
Just outside McGinnis’ office, I find Greta Filmanaviciute. She’s stuffing official demolition signs into her car.
Filmanaviciute: “I was getting permits. We’re going to tear down old house and building the new house.”
Allee: “Are you guys looking at a house that’s bigger than what you have now?”
Filmanaviciute: “No, actually, we are sizing down, but that’s because we’re a three-person family and I don’t want to have a huge house and then we have high utility bills. This is perfection for us, actually.”
Filmanaviciute says preservationists might not like that she’s tearing down her place, but her neighbors are glad she’s keeping things modest.
She says she’d be proud to start a small-home trend.
A national survey of home builders found 59% are already building smaller homes or planning to build smaller homes in the near future.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
This week, the US Department
of Commerce announced new
construction for single-family
homes increased 1.7% since June. Lester Graham
reports… what the announcement
didn’t say is that, on average,
those new homes are smaller:
Transcript
This week, the US Department
of Commerce announced new
construction for single-family
homes increased 1.7% since June. Lester Graham
reports… what the announcement
didn’t say is that, on average,
those new homes are smaller:
For the past 35 years, houses have gotten bigger and bigger. The square footage has increased 53%.
But, starting in the second half of 2008, that changed. And the trend to smaller houses is continuing this year.
Steve Melman monitors trends for the National Association of Home Builders.
He says, during past recessions, new house sizes decreased because smaller was more affordable. As soon as the economy recovered, the trend toward larger homes continued.
He says that might not be the case this time.
“This could be a change in that the homes might incorporate better design, better energy features, green features, but not necessarily increase in size.”
A national survey of home builders found 59% are already building smaller homes or planning to build smaller homes in the near future.
Matthew Grocoff says a whole house fan gives the same comfort as you would have with an air conditioning system.
(Photo courtesy of Greenovation TV)
Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:
Transcript
Energy efficiency is on the mind
of a lot of homeowners. They’re
starting to question everything
about their homes, even the need
for air conditioning. Lester
Graham met with some homeowners
and an energy-efficiency expert
to talk about a different approach
to cooling a house:
For some people, air-conditioning just feels a little unnatural. I mean, it’s a refrigerated room, right?
There are older ways of cooling a house that are cheaper and use a lot less electricity.
Matthew Grocoff is with Greenovation TV. His website suggests all kinds of ways to make homes more green.
We met at a house in a tree-lined neighborhood of century-old homes in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(sounds of house and stairs)
He wanted to show me an idea that’s like throwing open the windows and pulling in a cool summer breeze.
It’s called a whole house fan.
Grocoff: “We’re at the home of Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman. Thore actually installed this fan himself. It cost about $250 – about $9500 less than the quote that they got to install an air conditioning system in their house. And, this summer, they have not had to turn on their window units at all.”
Now Thore is not a carpenter. He’s a university researcher who studies monkey vocalizations. But, he decided he’d try to install the big fan in his ceiling on his own.
Bergman: “It was fairly easy. It took a couple hours. The tricky thing was – we have an older house that had layers of plaster and wood in the ceiling. So, cutting through that to make the hole took a little more work that it might in some houses. But it wasn’t too bad.”
Beehner: “I have to admit, I didn’t really believe that maybe he could install it himself. And yet, he did a great job. And I am the biggest fan of the whole house fan.”
Grocoff: “So, you’ve got the Beehner-Bergman fan club here. And this is interesting, because the goal, for most homeowners, is to get the house to a comfortable 72 degree temperature. And, it’s kind of strange that when it’s 65 degrees outside, and it’s 80 degrees inside your house, that we’re turning on an air conditioning unit when the air outside is actually colder than the air conditioning unit.”
(sound of fan turning on)
Bergman: “One drawback is the noise. Which, we’ve gotten used to. We kind of like it for sleeping – it blocks some of the street noise. We’re standing right underneath it, and it’s kind of hard to talk.”
Beehner: “But, we also have a baby. So the whole house fan serves as white noise, which really helps us move around upstairs while he’s asleep.”
Grocoff: “Those people who are not looking for that white noise sound, like Jacinta and Thore are for their baby, they’re going to be able to get something that’s quieter, more efficient, more insulated, that’s going to be virtually silent, at the higher price points.”
There have been some surprises along the way.
Jacinta says, you have to keep in mind – anything in the night air will be drawn into the house.
Beehner: “One night, we actually did turn it on, and within about one minute, our entire house was filled with the smell of skunk.
Grocoff: “So, if you’ve got really good, deep skunk smell, you know the fan is working. Another possible drawback is, with the air, you’re bringing in any kind of dust, pollen, anything else like that.”
But, Grocoff says, overall, this big sorta-box fan in the ceiling really pulls the hot air out of the house and pulls the cool air from outdoors into the house.
Now, these fans don’t work everywhere.
If you live in an extremely humid area, or a region where it never really cools down at night or in the morning, it might not be a good fit.
But for areas that enjoy cooler mornings and evenings in the summer, Grocoff says this is a good alternative.
Grocoff: “With a whole house attic fan, you’re going to get the same comfort as you would with an air conditioning system. But, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the cost for running an air conditioning system is 20 cents to 30 cents every hour that you have that turned on. For a whole house attic fan, you’re talking about a penny to a nickel an hour.”
There are all kinds of designs besides the big box fan types.
You can go to a home improvement store, your heating and cooling installer, or do some research online at greenovation.TV or just type in whole house fan in Google. You’ll find plenty of places wanting to sell you there version of a newly popular old idea.
The bill would require new homes to immediately be 30% more energy efficient. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:
Transcript
This session of Congress has pledged to take on
the issue of climate change. A bill in the Senate
is already awaiting action. But the House has
already passed the sweeping Clean Energy And
Security Act. One piece of that bill could change
the way homes are built in this country. In short,
they’d use a lot less energy. Tamara Keith has more:
The bill would require a re-write of building codes. New homes would immediately have to be 30% more energy efficient. And the requirements would keep getting tougher from there.
The idea is controversial. But for Alex Dean, building efficiently is just the way he does business.
“It’s building to a higher standard. And we really enjoy building fine projects for people who want it done right.”
Dean is the CEO of the Alexander Group, a home design, build and renovation firm in Maryland. He’s showing me around a green remodel.
(sound of key in door)
“This is the entry from the garage into the new addition.”
Dean and his team are putting an addition on a home in an upscale Washington, DC suburb.
He’s designed every detail with an eye to energy efficiency, starting with the insulation. He used a spray foam. It costs about twice as much as the insulation required by current building codes.
“You know, it’s worth it, and in the overall scheme of building the house, it’s not that much money.”
On this hot humid day, you can feel the difference the fancy insulation makes.
Keith: “It’s cooler than it is outside.
Dean: “Yeah, yeah.”
Keith: “And there’s no AC running in here right now.”
Dean: “No, not at all. And this building is directly in the sun. But that’s how effective this is. This is keeping some of the coolness from last night when it was in the 60s.”
That means he can install smaller heating and air conditioning units that use less energy.
The windows are double paned. The lights, all compact fluorescents or super efficient LEDs.
It’s projects like this one that make Bill Fay confident home builders will be able to handle greener building codes. Fay is the executive director of the Building Energy Efficient Codes Network.
“We know it’s achievable. And we know it’s achievable using affordable technologies. It’s just now a matter to have the resolve to do it.”
Past efforts at greening the building codes met with stiff opposition from home builders and failed to make it through congress.
Koteri Callahan is president of the Alliance to Save Energy and she says the stakes are high. Buildings are huge energy wasters.
“Every house and every office building that goes in the ground today is going to be around for decades and decades and in some cases centuries.”
But these days, the ground isn’t being broken on very many homes. The industry is in a serious slump.
Bill Kilmer is the head of advocacy for the National Association of Home Builders and he doesn’t want members of congress to forget about the industry’s struggles.
“Consumers certainly in the last year are stepping back and said, ‘what can we afford.’ And so we’re trying to take a mainstream, if you will, that says, ‘people want this.’ How can we get to that point, and how can we get there reasonably, and take afford-ability into account.”
Kilmer says the building industry is taking environmental issues seriously, and recently created a voluntary green building certification program.
But, he says the House bill moves too far too fast. He says builders would like until 2012 to meet the 30% efficiency goal.
“You really don’t have the equipment or the materials that are ready and ramped up to make the adjustments in the marketplace to bring those things to bear, without a tremendous cost burden that’ll be added on to the production of the housing and that obviously is going to be passed on to someone, and that’ll be the consumer.”
This question of affordability is a big one. And it seems like everyone has a statistic to make their point.
Molly Aubuchon and Stefan Meyer survey their lawn. (Photo by Julie Grant)
There are some dead spots in the yard, but they don't want to use chemicals. (Photo by Julie Grant)
They like to keep the yard natural and free from chemicals. (Photo by Julie Grant)
Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:
Transcript
Many Americans love full, lush
lawns. Fertilizers and herbicides
might help. But there’s concern
about water pollution from lawn
chemicals. Julie Grant reports
that some experts say you can use
them, just don’t over-use them:
Molly Aubuchon and her husband Stefan Meyer aren’t sure
what they’re going to do. Their two little kids are running
around the yard. Stefan wants a lawn of thick, soft grass for
them to play on. But that’s not what he’s got.
Stefan: “As you can see, there’s no grass here.
I don’t know what some of this stuff is. Some kind of moss.
I think even the moss died, so now we have dead moss
that’s like yellow and brown.”
Molly: “It’s not attractive dead.”
Stefan: “No. I just think, when I’m out here cutting my grass,
I’m like, man, if I lived across the street, I’d be like, ‘hey look,
they’re cutting absolutely nothing again. They’re just running
that lawn mower over bare spots.’”
They see their neighbors, with those thick, green lawns,
spreading chemicals a few times a year. Molly and Stefan
don’t want to do that.
Molly: “Well, the fact that I’ve got kids running around here
all day. And the fact that it seeps into the water supply and
the rivers, that’s a concern to me.”
There are lots of people who are concerned about lawn
pollution. Lawns have gotten a bad wrap in some places –
because of the fertilizers and other chemicals people use on
them. In much of Canada, lawn chemicals have actually
been banned.
Lou DiGeranimo is General Manager of Water in Toronto.
He says lawn chemicals were damaging the water quality.
“People were over-fertilizing, they were using commercial
pesticides. That chemical ended up in the rivers and ended
up in the lake. We passed a bylaw that prohibited that.”
But some experts say the chemical bans in Canada are
extreme.
David Gardner is professor of turf grass at the Ohio State
University. He doesn’t think banning lawn chemical will do
anything to improve the environment.
“Based on the work that I have seen, based on the research
that has been conducted, I believe that if there is a unilateral
ban on the use of pesticides it will make absolutely no
impact on our environmental footprint.”
Gardner says compared to
other sources of pollution, like cars and over-use of
chemicals on farms, the impact of lawn care is miniscule.
Still, Gardner says people like Molly and Stefan can keep
nice lawns – without using a lot of chemicals.
He says you’ve got to cut the grass and water regularly.
He also recommends fertilizing lightly in the spring and more
heavily in the fall.
That’s what Gardner does at his house – and he uses only 6
to 8 ounces of herbicide a year.
“Putting it another way, if I were to go to a store and buy one
of those gallon jugs of ready-made herbicide, that would be
enough to last me for about 16 years.”
Gardner says the herbicide will hit its expiration date before
he has a chance to use it all.
But Molly and Stefan just aren’t sold. They don’t want to use
lawn chemicals just to appease the neighbors.
Stefan: “I just want to feel good about the way my yard
looks for my own satisfaction. I would like to cultivate some
grass that looks good, you know, with my hands.”
Besides, Stefan says, they don’t have the worst looking lawn
on the street and they’d just rather not add unnecessary
chemicals into the environment.
Stefan: “We don’t have the worst lawn on the street. Our
street is not that long. It’s only four blocks, five blocks long –
there’s a house down there and their yard looks worse than
ours.”
Nationwide, farms use the bulk of chemicals. But one expert says homeowners are more likely to overuse pesticides and fertilizers. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
New laws restrict pesticides and fertilizers in some cities. In recent years, farms have cut the use of chemicals. But, Rebecca Williams reports, some environmentalists say there are still far too many chemicals polluting streams and lakes:
Transcript
New laws restrict pesticides and fertilizers in some cities. In recent years, farms have cut the use of chemicals. But, Rebecca Williams reports, some environmentalists say there are still far too many chemicals polluting streams and lakes:
There are 40 million acres of lawns and sports fields in the US. That’s only one-tenth of the amount of cropland.
But some experts say lawn pesticides and fertilizers can be more of a problem.
Charles Benbrook is the Chief Scientist with the Organic Center. It’s a non-profit research group in Oregon.
“While there are many more acres of corn and soybeans and cotton treated with pesticides than there are lawns, the rate of application on lawns in urban areas often is far higher than on the farm.”
And, he says people are more likely to get exposed to chemicals on lawns.
“There’s many more opportunities for significant exposures, particularly for children and pregnant women in urban areas.”
Nationwide, farms do use the bulk of chemicals. But Benbrook says homeowners are more likely to overuse pesticides and fertilizers.
Before paying big bucks for a geothermal heat pump, try a little insulation first. (Photo by Jennifer Dickert)
