Having lived for much of my life in the green, lush rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, it comes as a surprise to almost everyone that arid, desert-like regions are my favourite landscape. One such landscape can be found on the island of Tenerife, the biggest of the Canary Islands, Spain. During my first visit to this astonishing island, I encountered an interesting phenomenon which, in the midst of a climate crisis, made me stare in amazement.
Arthur and Liz were a typical English retired couple in their mid-70s who did what many English folks of their age group do: start Life 2.0 on a sunny island in the south after selling their home and belongings in the UK. They bought a large property including a small one-room house at the back of the property as a vacation rental. That’s how we met them. We arrived on a hot day. No wind rustled the palm trees. The cicadas and birds were too lazy to chirp or fly, a late July day with the temperatures in the high 30s Celsius. When I looked out from our small patio, I was amazed at the expanse of green, green grass in front of me, a veritable oasis for our eyes to feast on, especially in a place where water is more precious than gold. There was no sign to tell me to “stay off the lawn”. So, of course, I did what had to be done: I took off my sandals and stepped on the green dream.
It turned out it wasn’t a dream, more an illusion: it was artificial grass. Arthur had been the owner of a small, successful artificial lawn company in the UK. When he retired and moved his life to the Canaries, all the stock he had left was shipped to his new home. A very shrewd idea and one he was very proud to tell us about over a 5 o’clock G&T. I was suitably impressed, and a few years later when I looked at our own, very hot backyard on the same island, filled with an amazing collection of cacti, oleander, palm trees, and Bougainvillea, that memory resurfaced. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit of green to dig my naked feet in? And so, my journey to explore artificial grass began.
The story begins in the United States in the late 1950s, a period marked by growing concerns about youth fitness. In 1958, the Ford Foundation established the Educational Facilities Laboratory (EFL), a non-profit organization dedicated to modernizing education and creating conducive environments for learning. Dr. Harold B. Gores, the first president of EFL, was keenly aware of the national dialogue surrounding children’s physical fitness.
A 1953 study by Dr. Hans Kraus and Dr. Sonya Weber had revealed that American children were significantly less fit than their European counterparts, with 56.6% of American children failing a basic fitness test compared to only 8.2% of European children. This finding sent shockwaves through the nation, prompting a renewed focus on physical education.
In the early 1960s, Dr. Gores approached Monsanto’s Chemstrand Company with an innovative idea. He suggested they develop a perfect urban playing surface, one that could provide children with more opportunities for physical activity. Monsanto, already researching synthetic fibres for carpeting, took on the challenge.
The result of this collaboration was ChemGrass, a “monofilament ribbon pile product”. In 1964, the first installation of this artificial turf took place at the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, a green carpet that would soon revolutionize sports surfaces across America, from school playgrounds to professional stadiums and has turned out to be a very mixed bag of history, reminiscent of “Jekyll & Hyde”.
The first large-scale installation happened in Texas, state of many large-scale things. Judge Roy Hofheinz, first owner of the Houston Astros Franchise, had been hugely impressed with the Colosseum when visiting Rome. Not only did he take up the idea of a round arena, but he also took note of the Romans’ idea to use a retractable roof to keep any weather quirks from interfering with the game. Accordingly, he gave the world: The Houston Astrodome. It opened in 1965 with a roof made from semitransparent cream-coloured panels. However, the players were not impressed: against those panels, fly balls were nearly impossible to make out. A man of action, Judge Hofheinz got the panels painted a grayish tint.
While the flyball problem was solved, the grass did not fare as well. It died off quickly over the ensuing weeks due to the lack of light. The Astrodome, a technological marvel of the space age and by some called the “8th wonder of the world”, became the butt of many a jokester. Again, Hofheinz stepped up his game. He assigned his assistant Tal Smith to find a space-age-worthy solution, and on the double. Someone had told Smith about the artificial grass at Moses Brown School. He decided to check it out and thought it would work. Hofheinz loved the idea and challenged Monsanto to create an artificial field for the Astrodome within a two-month timespan. They came through. The 1966 baseball season was played on the newly rebranded AstroTurf, creating a much more inspired name still in use by many today.
Back to my dream of green. I had no plans to use my little lawn for sporting events when pondering the idea of installing an artificial lawn. I just liked the idea of achieving a green oasis without using water.
But while pondering the investment, some first doubts started to niggle. During the heat of an August afternoon in the Canaries, the artificial fibres would not allow me to wiggle my toes in the green mesh without asking for a burn. After all: it is plastic, so it gets a lot hotter than natural grass. I also concluded that the claim to being ‘maintenance-free’ was probably an exaggeration: surely leaves, dead flower heads, and dust from the Sahara Desert would land on the pristine green. Instead of the lawn mower, I would need to get my vacuum cleaner out. Still, I would conserve water and help the environment, right?
So, I continued my research. I came across an article from July 2021 by Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from The New York Times. This article really drove home the fact that artificial lawn is ultimately a gigantic, green-coloured plastic bag draped over the soil. The microplastics that are now found down to the deepest depths of the world’s oceans would be leeching from my ‘lawn’ 24 hours a day. Any biological life normally found in the soil, as well as the soil health itself, would be compromised.
And of course, artificial lawns do not last forever. My plastic lawn would break apart and would need to be removed and replaced. Where does it go then? Plastic recycling? That’s the idea. The reality is grimmer than it sounds, however. The different components that make up an artificial lawn need to be physically separated to make any recycling effective, which means it is just about impossible to achieve. There are some niche companies trying to crack this problem, and make a business out of it, but it is an expensive method and does not exist in many places, certainly not on a small island in the South Atlantic. So, for now, any artificial lawn goes into a regular landfill and continues to break down into polluting microplastics.
That spelled the end of my flirtation with artificial grass. Gazing at my vibrant desert garden, my cacti stood tall, looking rather prickly at the notion of being replaced by plastic imposters. The palm trees, swaying soothingly in the breeze, seemed to wink at me, as if to say, “Nice try, but we’ve got this covered.” In the end, who needs a high-maintenance green carpet when you have a low-maintenance work of living, natural art? Besides, I mused, if I ever feel the urge to wiggle my toes in something soft, there’s always the beach down the road. As for my dreams of a lush, green oasis? Well, I’ll just have to settle for being green with envy every time I visit the Pacific Northwest.