Each year, Americans spend approximately $700 million on lawn care, including treatments with fertilizers and pesticides. These chemicals may make lawns appear greener and healthier, but in truth, they actually hold a dark secret. Pesticides in particular — a category that can include herbicides, as well — can significantly impact groundwater, wildlife, and even soil quality. Pesticides can even have adverse effects on human health, leading to conditions ranging from liver and kidney damage to various types of cancer.
However, there are alternatives to these harsh treatments for your lawn. Organic lawn services are expanding throughout the U.S., and they utilize a number of lawncare treatments that won’t produce the same harmful effects.
Is it time for your family to make the switch to organic lawn services? Here are three signs that pesticide free lawncare may be right for you:
- Your current lawncare is making you sick. Pesticides and fertilizers can have some pretty strong smells, so it’s natural to not like applying them to your lawn. Instead, you may want to switch to some greener methods of lawncare, like grasscycling and composting. Grasscycling keeps grass clippings on the lawn after mowing and reduces the need for nitrogen-based fertilizer use on a lawn by at least 50%. Tea composting is another method of treating your yard and garden, and it has been shown to help grass grow between two and four times in length compared with lawns with conventional treatments.
- You’re concerned about your children and pets after pesticides are sprayed. Children and animals tend to love running through the grass during the summertime, so it’s easy for them to track dirt and grass stains into the house. But if you get your lawn sprayed with conventional pesticides, then that may not be all they’re bringing into the home. If you’re concerned about keeping your kids and the family dog out of harm’s way, then reconsidering the pesticide use in your yard may be one place to start.
- You want to help the environment. Not only does pesticide poisoning cause an estimated one million human deaths per year, but it also upsets the balance of our ecosystem. Back in the mid-1990s, one study found that 90% of water and fish samples from U.S. streams contained one or more pesticides. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse. Pesticides and pesticide traces have been discovered in groundwater in at least 43 states over the past 20 years. Going organic for your lawncare can help you do your part to reduce this strain on the environment.
If you think you need organic lawn services, make sure to call an organic lawncare company in your area. Have more questions? Leave a comment in the space provided below. Research more like this.
