The Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter’s Plastic Pollution Prevention Team has been working very hard to convince local governments, including cities, counties, and school districts, to turn their backs on greenhouse gas producing, land and water polluting, injury and illness producing, heat inducing, unrecyclable, soil deadening plastic turf in favor of drought tolerant, sustainable carbon-sequestering plants, including grasses on sporting fields. We’ve even found experts located in California, and examples of sustainable grass fields and alternate landscape plantings, all to help landscape designers and athletic coaches understand sustainable alternatives.
But sometimes the best examples for your own backyard come from halfway around the world.
In Australia a fight over the Middle Head Oval athletic field’s surfacing, through soil amendments and attention to agricultural detail, resulted in a grass sports field that has made everyone, environmentalists, coaches and players, happy.
The following screenshot was taken from an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.) video posted online of the resulting set of fields.
In the video environmentalist Kate Eccles emphasizes that “the environmental issues” with the plastic originally pitched by the athletic organization “first of all, include a loss of biodiversity,” but that with the new grass fields there are invertebrates and birds that visit the fields, “including lapwings, magpies and peewees.”
The local governmental council called in soil scientist Mick Battam who determined that the soil needed amending and ultimately they used locally sourced composted garden waste. Once the field was ready and after players started using the field, a delighted local coach is quoted as saying that they are playing more games on the resulting field than on any other field in the area.
This goes to show what can be accomplished when people come together, use their knowledge and imagination, and work to come up with an environmentally and climate change friendly solution that helps both athletes and biodiversity.
This is exactly the sort of solution the SCLP’s Plastic Pollution Prevention Team would like to see in Santa Clara County, San Mateo and San Benito Counties and beyond. To join our team and become part of the solution - email susan.hinton@lomaprieta.sierraclub.org.