Gas lawnmowers are stinky, smoggy pollution factories.  While they take the work out of keeping a lawn neat and clipped, they produce substantially higher emissions than cars do and represent an astounding five percent of the world’s pollution.  The EPA says that one new gas powered lawnmower will produce as much pollution in one hour as 11 new cars would in the same amount of time.  Pretty disgusting, when you consider a lawnmower’s sole purpose is vanity.

I don’t think lawnmowers get enough attention in environmental talk.  At the rate we are going, we will not have a world left to destroy soon, and the fact that something we use purely to make our homes look better is accounting for five percent of the problem should not go unnoticed.

If you are working toward a greener lifestyle, chances are you have already made some sacrifices.  You may take fewer trips in your car, use fewer disposable household items, and have probably reduced the amount of garbage you produce.  Yet somehow, most of us are still mowing our lawns once a week, and what a toll that is taking.

Over the past few years, we have steadily decreased the amount of lawn mowing we do.  We also water less, so our lawn does not maintain that pristine green in late summer, but we mow very rarely after the heat of August.  Not only do we produce less emissions this way, but we are also spending less time on that noisy, stinky machine and more time enjoying what we should enjoy – each other.