Real grass good, fake grass better?
Astroturf, fake grass, You know the stuff, a beautiful bright green layer of plastic carpet across every high foot traffic area. It’s in every shopping mall, hospital, school and playroom constructed since its inception in 1965. It’s great because unlike the real stuff it doesn’t require things like dirt, water or mowing. Thus cutting down on the time professional gardeners spend maintaining corporate gardens and the amount of money you spend on them. I’ve worked in childcare for over a decade at this point, I’ve only ever seen one long hours service that had real grass and they have since ripped it up in favour of the fake stuff to.
Real grass is more common in community kindys and non-for profits as most of them place more value on the experiences for the child rather than the profit that each child can bring in. A lot of these small, not-for profit centres also require you to bring in a pre packed lunch for each child who attends every day so none of the budget is spent on hiring a chef and buying food. Instead the budget could be spent on gardening, so real grass and better experiences for the children. There is value for a child in fake turf, its great for greening up an indoors space for an activity, or as a sensory experience but Its value on the ground outdoors is a little more limited.
For a start, fake grass is made out of plastic. A black plastic sheet with tufted strips of dark green plastic in any sort heat gets real hot real quick. It’s like walking on hot sand in the middle of summer. Better yet it’s sharp like the sealed edges of a Zooper Dooper and will start shading material upon installation. I don’t mind a little cost cutting, the vast majority of childcare is a for-profit sector. But allowing children to get paper cuts on a surface that is incline to heat up enough to burn their feet and shed microplastics into the environment due to normal use, rain and UV exposure, really?
Weirdly enough, astroturf isn’t a renewable resource. Really though, plastic is made using fossil fuels. It’s a byproduct of oil, as in the stuff used to make petrol. Even without a oil crisis, the world is trying to move away form ‘Dino juice’ and toward greener alternatives, maybe like real grass. Mining for, using and disposal of our fake grass harms our environment by producing greenhouse gasses, removing forests, creating pollution, killing our wildlife and habitat destruction, just to name a few. Besides there are benefits of having real grass.
Real grass doesn’t get hot, its soft so it won’t cut you, and it avoids all the environmental issues associated with non-recyclable soft plastics leaching into our planet. Your constantly watering the fake grass to cool it down as a risk mitigation plan anyway, if anything you use less water because the ground is cooler to begin with. Sure you have to mow it, but is that really an issue given how much grass the children actually have to play on? Better yet its a totally different sensory experience to fake grass for children to interact with and explore.
So what’s the real cost in paying for a commercial gardener to come round and mow? Or is the price of convince and the perceived cost in gardening holding us back here. I’m on team real grass, however that’s unlikely in this climate. See my activity from last week if that’s not possible for you. Whatever it is, kids should have a right to play on grass that is growing in soil. Not plastic that supposed to mimic it and does a horrible job at doing so.
Last but not least activity of the week,
Gardening, we’ve done a few activities previously on the concept like last weeks attempt to provide the grass experience in the comfort of patio but its always been to experiment with and explore a world, never to build one. Lets take our compost jar from back in March and do something with it.
You will need;
Compost, either home made or brought
A large jar or plastic bottle, the bigger the better
A potato
Water
Place your compost into your jar, if it isn’t already, until the jar is half full. Place the potato in next with the eye of the potato down and cover 2/3 of te way over with soil. Last give your potato a drink. Over the next few months you should see stems, roots and then more potatoes growing though the clear walls of the container.