Is the grass really greener? Rethinking UCLA's largest crop and the American dream

No, this article's title is not in reference to wacky tobacky, medical or otherwise. I'm talking about good ol' all American turf. The stuff you grew up skinning your knees on and rolling around in until you itched like crazy. This Wednesday, the Daily Bruin's headline piece was all about UCLA lawn care in the aftermath of the weekend long LA Times Festival of Books, which took place spread out across the many lawned quads in the heart of campus. The result of tents and people was most definitely bad for the lawns, but have no fear. They should be back in tip top shape in days or weeks- just in time for graduation most likely, when more tents, chairs, and people will mash down and kill the lawns. Use of these lawns is only intermittent and by departmental or adminstrative preference ("Wouldn't be nice to have graduation out on the lawn!?") not out of necessity. I pose the question, Is there a better use of these lawns than that of growing lawns?

With over 80% of US households maintaining a private lawn, grass isn't as green as it looks. Estimates vary but the total area of lawns in the US is somewhere between 15 and 30 million acres! Let's put this into perspective. About 10 million acres of cotton are harvested per year; 70-80 million acres of corn; 50 million acres of wheat; and less than 5 million of rice (more details). Harvesting these crops generates billions of dollars in revenue each year. Wow! Grass could be a major player in US agriculture right? Um...well not really because you see, here in America, we don't really do anything with our lawns except trample them, water them, mow them, and trample them some more. Until recently, all the mowed grass went to landfills. Now, some cities have composting programs but not nearly enough to handle the large crop of grass clippings that are wasted each year. And how many pesticides are sprayed and how many gallons of water poured into a crop with little value other than its use value? I have no idea, but consider this use-value next time you cruise through your neighborhood. Let's say your driving down your street...no wait...You're riding your bike down your street- there, that's greener- what percentage of lawns are actually being used for playing, lounging, pooping (if you're a dog) or some other activity? I have no idea but usually in my neighborhood there's nobody 'lawning' or whatever it is you call it, unless of course its Saturday afternoon and lawns are being mowed.

If you asked me, I'd say this situation appears to be a shamefully wasteful and destructive one. No one asks me though and when I mention it, it gets me in trouble. Why? Because people love their lawns. They are infatuated with them and hold and ideal image of home that includes a soft, poofy, 4 inch thick mat of green lawn framing the suburban abode and distinguishing one plot (and neighbor) from the next. Just to prove how much people adore their lawns and think of them as a necessity, I'll tell you a story.

I was once strolling across one of UCLA's wide grassy quads, talking with someone I'd just met when the subject of grass came up. I commented that UCLA should get rid of all of its unused lawns because they were wasteful and required constant fertilizing and upkeep. I might has well have insulted this persons family honor because they were not pleased with me at all. "What?! Are you kidding?! You can't get rid of this grass! Don't you love it? Why would you suggest such a thing.." The disbelief and offense in their voice betrayed such sentimental fondness. "Well, I won't go there- on that lawn- again," I thought, and we dropped the subject.

But here I am again, on that lawn, that big, green, and wide expanse of American dream dotted with doggy doody that many of us, myself included, share a fondness for (the grass, not the doody). Is it somehow blasphemy to say we should get rid of it? Part of some pinko commie liberal plot? I don't think so. It just seems like common sense: Keep the parks, the soccer fields, the baseball diamonds, but get rid of the lawns. And do what? Grow something else instead? Precisely. Grow food instead. A garden uses less water and saves you loads of money on organic produce. Grow food and share it or trade it with your neighbors because that builds solidarity within your community. If you want, keep a nice small plot of lawn in the middle so you can lie there surrounded on all sides by the bountiful fruits of your labor. These fruits are substantial, not aesthetic. You can live off them, as has the Dervaes family of Pasadena, a model of self-sufficiency, frugality, and innovation amongst Los Angeles's big city suburban sprawl. It doesn't get more local than picking food from your own yard. If you want to live the American dream with American ideals then take out the lawns and grow your own food. To my mind, the Dervaes are the quintessential all-American family- they are self-sufficient, hardy, and innovative like the pioneers; they are frugal entrepreneurs who make a living off of the goods they grow to meet local demand for healthy organic produce; they represent family and community values by the children they've raised (who still live at home and help out with the business of growing and selling produce) and by the community they've fostered through educational efforts and regular neighborhood potlucks. This could be the alternative to the American Lawn, if people would let go of their sentimental fondness for green turf and be open to more traditional alternatives.

So, at risk of offending grass-lovers all over again, I ask, "Is there a better use of UCLA's lawns than that of growing lawns for aesthetic purposes and the occasional book fair?" By now you should know what the answer to this is. We should tear out some, most in fact but not all, of the lawns and turn the remaining spaces into student run organic community gardens that produce fruits and vegetables for the dining halls and for a student run farmers market. I envision a hillside next to Janss steps, stepped with garden plots, park benches, and cozy patches of lawn where you can take a nap between classes and munch on a peach or apple while friends tend to their garden plots. I challenge anyone and everyone to come up with a good reason why this shouldn't be so. It would save UCLA loads of money on food. It would teach business and entrepeneurial skills to UCLA students. It would provide an opportunity for UCLA to become a leader in alternative, sustainable agricultural programs. It would create a strong sense of community and community values on campus that would spread to communities around the country as graduates went off to find their way in life, taking with them a strong belief in protecting the environment and building up local, sustainable, food economies. I don't know about you, but to me this sounds like a pretty appetizing recipe for success, for everyone involved...except maybe John Deere.

American Bird Conservancy on Predation of Birds by Domestic Cats

Rabbits as the more sustainable house pet

Bunelope and Ukku, best friends after a day of hard work shredding cardboard.

Rabbits are becoming more and more popular as house pets these days. Still, not very many people are familiar with them as pets and prefer the more traditional cat or dog. Of the many reasons people give for having rabbits as house pets, the environment is not typically one of them. Sure, they are adorable and soft, intelligent, playful, relatively odorless, easily litter box trained and highly social animals with loads of personality (or rather rabbitality), but they're also more sustainable than cats or dogs. Don't get me wrong, I love cats and dogs but did you know that the chicken and grains that their food is made from leave rather large footprints on this planet. In fact, by some accounts your medium size dog has a larger ecological footprint than your SUV, your cat, a footprint about the size of a VW Golf.

As an alternative you might try rabbits, but before you go ahead with that option, do your homework. I know from personal experience that rabbits are a lot of work, especially when you've never had them before and are unfamiliar with their "language". Their natural behaviors are very different from cats and dogs because they are prey animals. They also like to chew anything in their path or in their way- wires, clothing, books, mail... That said, once you learn to live with them and adapt your home environment to their mischievous ways, they are delightful companions with far more intelligence than they are usually credited with. But what makes them more sustainable you ask? Here's what:

1. They are vegetarian which means their food wasn't raised on a CAFO.
2. They eat low on the food chain- grass mostly. This means not as many resources like water and fossil fuels went into growing their food as raising your cat or your dog's food.
3. They don't eat grains or meat, which means no corn or corn-fed animals went into your bunny's diet. (OK so they actually love to eat grains but it's really not good for their tummies!)
4. They eat your veggie scraps, cutting down on your trash output.
5. They are natural composters. This is no joke! They take grass and turn it into dry little pellets that do great good for your garden or composting bin. A plus side is that their poops don't stink and they have superb personal hygiene.
6. They're small so they don't eat or drink much or take up much space. Note that rabbits should spend as much time as possible outside of a cage or penned area. A hutch rabbit is a bored, sad, and lonely rabbit.
7. They won't kill the wildlife (every year cats kill billions of wild animals).


Now if you already have a cat or dog and are thinking to yourself, "I don't care what he says, I'll never get a stupid rabbit!", you're in luck because there are ways to make owning a dog or cat more sustainable, like making your own dog food with organic, sustainably grown grains and organic pastured beef and chicken.

Links to student blogs

Below are links to the blogs where students taking the course are posting their assignments and commentaries on sustainability issues. If you are a visitor and not in the course you are still welcome to follow any or all of these. In fact, we would love it if you did!

Aman- http://lalfuture.blogspot.com

Autumn- http://kaotikrevelations.blogspot.com/

Brian - http://globalcluster.blogspot.com/

Dana- http://danatrans.blogspot.com/

Danielle- http://sustainabledanielle.blogspot.com/

Ellen- http://crowdofseas.blogspot.com/

Joanna- http://sustainabilityadventure.blogspot.com/

Katie- http://journeyintosustainability.blogspot.com/

Nahela- http://nahelaa.blogspot.com/

Nora- http://norabrackbill.blogspot.com/

Phyllisia- http://gettinglittlefeet.blogspot.com

Serena- http://serenalomonico.blogspot.com

Sherbing- http://sherbingaling.blogspot.com/

Stephanie D.- http://stephdyar.blogspot.com/

Stephanie G.- http://stephgonz.blogspot.com/

Taylor- http://globalwarmingishott.blogspot.com/

Tyler- http://tylervucla.blogspot.com/

Vicki- http://sustainabilityisdanewblack.blogspot.com/

Vincent- http://livinsustainably.blogspot.com/

Yalda- http://yaldaaaaamn.blogspot.com/

Which plastics should you avoid like the plague and which should you ingest with abandon?

In an ideal and sustainable world we might be using little or no plastic but in the one we live in daily, we are surrounded by it. Encased in plastic as our lives are, we sit on it, eat out of it, write with it, walk on it, drive in it, brush our hair and teeth with it, pack gifts with it, open boxes with it, eat with it, drink with it, and not only that but also eat and drink it and that's just for starters! Yes we eat and drink plastic although hopefully not on purpose. The plastic containers you store food in and drink water from, the saran wrap you smother your leftovers with, the plastic forks and knives that purveyors of fast food provide you with, may all leach little bits of plastic into the environment, your food and drink, your body. Recently there has been more talk about what these little bits of chemicals that leach into your water from that water bottle you carry clipped on your pack or that seep into your food when heated in the microwave might do to you, and what scientists are finding is that the ubiquitous plastics we take for granted, the garbage pile of plastics we have built our daily live-in environments from may not be so good for us, may not be so benign after all. There are different types of plastics and different recipes for making them. Some may be worse than others. Some may be carcinogenic or mimic natural hormones in your body so that they disrupt function of normal processes. Of particular concern are plastics that come in contact with our food and drink. So, according to current belief, which plastics should you avoid? I'll sum it up for you here to make things simple and provide you with some links if you want to read more.

To avoid:
Containers to avoid include anything made with PVC that leeches BPA or contains known carcinogens. This means plastic #3 (most cling wraps), #6 (styrofoam cups), #7 (polycarbonates used to make those clear, hard colorful Nalgene bottles), and possibly even #1 (used in single-use water bottles, ketchup bottles, and other food packaging).

Maybe OK:
Plastic #2, 4, 5, (and maybe 1) are not currently known to leech harmful chemicals into your water or food, which isn't to say that they are OK or healthy.

Bottom line:
Avoid plastics and use stainless steel or other materials as an alternative!

Links:

http://www.plasticsinfo.org/ This is the industry website and according to them pretty much all plastics are OK. Read with a healthy amount of skepticism, and remember how the lead industry responded to good science on lead poisoning- they desperately marketed lead paint to parents using images of happy healthy children!

http://www.mindfully.org/ This website is clearly biased in the opposite direction but you have to ask yourself what their motivations are- profit or public health. They list their sources so you can decide for yourself whether they are full of truth or just full of plastic.

http://www.washingtonpost.com Journalists are supposed to be unbiased, honest, and fair right? Here's a transcript of a Q & A up on the Washington Post's site. Decide for yourself whether this is a load of plastic and you want to continue ingesting BPA.

Class Project Guidelines and Instructions

General guidelines

The class project is an activity-based assignment. That is, I want you to get hands-on with sustainable lifestyle issues. The key word here to keep in mind as you think about what you might like to do is "lifestyle". For this seminar, what we're really interested in are the ways most people currently choose to live versus alternative and more sustainable ways of living that most haven't yet experienced. Since there isn't just one sustainable lifestyle to fit everyone's needs, this predicament and its solutions can be conceived of in a variety of ways, depending on one's perspective and goals.

One of the goals of this seminar is to have you come away with experiences that will have taught you something about actually living more sustainably here in LA. So, your project should be something experiential. Each of you will submit a proposal at the beginning of week three, which I will go over with you in class. Week 4, begin your project, if you haven't already done so by then. Your project should take you on a month-long journey into sustainable living. During that time you are required to compose several blog entries that reflect on your ongoing project. These entries should be thoughtful, relevant, well written and perhaps reflective, critical, or descriptive of your experiences that arise from your project.

For your final assignment, you are asked to give a short presentation about your project during week 9 or 10. An outline of your presentation is due Thursday of week 7. By now, you must be wondering what this is all about and what you could possibly do for a project, so without further ado here are your options to choose from:

Project Options

Option 1: Change how you live and then write about it

Use your carbon footprint calculation to identify the areas of your lifestyle that contribute the most to your carbon footprint and reduce them by making some significant changes in your own lifestyle. For example, if you are a heavy meat eater you would go vegetarian. If you drive a lot, you would reduce your mileage and commute by bike or public transportation. Several books/documentaries have been based on this sort of model- the family that only bought American for a whole year, another that tries to reduce their impact to zero (No Impact Man), a PBS reality series where families recreated early American life on the prairie, a guy who eats all the McDonald's he can for a month (Supersize Me), another guy who smokes all the weed he can for a month (Superhigh Me), a writer, Barbara Kingsolver, who moves her family out to a farm and grows all her families food for a whole year,... the list goes on I'm sure. These people do these radical living experiments to 1. Experience life differently and share that experience, and 2. To make some point (e.g. McDonald's is really unhealthy).

Option 2: Be an advocate of change, here on campus

If you choose this option, you have to come up with something very specific that you want to see changed on campus and embark on a mission to make that change happen, or you have to join an ongoing campaign for change that has been organized by one of the student groups (namely E3). If you choose the latter, you must take on responsibilities as a key player in that campaign.

Option 3: Design your own sustainable community

If you are a graphic artist and into public policy-making and architecture, design a sustainable, urban community. Your project should include drawings or models of the community as well as an explanation of all the features that make the community sustainable. This design should embody a philosophy of or perspective on sustainability and should also integrate form, function, and ecology. Go to the art library and look at some architects' books that already do this.

Option 4: Write a guide to sustainable living in LA for folks in the lower economic brackets.

Not everyone has the funds to shop at Whole Foods or savings to buy a cabin in the woods. Write a short guidebook that will persuade the average Jane or Joe Schmo that living sustainably is not only affordable, but healthy and fun for the whole family, or just plain cool. Put your devious marketing savvy to good use by selling sustainability to the masses.

Option 5: Devise an entertaining and educational performance or presentation about sustainable living for K-6, junior high or high school

If you choose this option you will have to perform it for your final presentation.

Option 6: Write your own cook book about sustainable living and sustainable cooking.

Write a cookbook on sustainable eating with sidebars about sustainable living. Cook something that embodies sustainability and feed it to us for your final presentation!

Option 7: Do your own thing

Propose something else to me and if I think it is 1. Doable in the time allotted; and 2. On par with the rest of the suggestions here, then go for it!

Timeline and Details

1. Email me a half-page description of what you propose to do for your project, no later than Monday morning of week 3.

(Note: If the project you have in mind is something that inherently warrants a multiparty effort, then you may work in groups of no more than 3. But if you go this route, your reasons must be well-justified in a joint proposal submitted by you and your partners.)

2. Email me a half-page description of what you propose to do for your final presentation, no later than Thursday morning of week 7.

3. Sign up for a presentation slot, week 8.

4. Present, weeks 9 and 10.