Synthetic grass is always ‘greener’

BALCATTA business Green Planet Grass has the annual Green Fair covered.

Held at the city’s QV1 building daily from 7am to 6pm until Friday, August 6, the fair showcases businesses working to create a more sustainable future.

Green Planet Grass is one business showing its wares, offering a range of synthetic lawns as a way of saving water, time and money.

“We see it (the fair) as an opportunity to take people through the eco-benefits of Australian synthetic grass,” Green Planet Grass managing director Jeff Dennis said. “We have a sustainable product in relation to water-saving and a water-harvesting system that captures rain water.”

The firm offers a process that takes the rainfall from synthetic grass to an underground drain and pumps it back into a reticulation system for use in other garden areas.

A couple of the firm’s bigger projects to date were introducing 300sqm of synthetic lawn to a café strip in Ardross and a 1400sqm sports surface for Yangebup Primary School.

“The majority of (synthetic) residential and sports lawns are now polyethylene – a durable but considerably softer plastic, which has been on the market for about five years,” Mr Dennis said.

When doing the sums on keeping a 50sqm area of traditional lawn green, Mr Dennis said a synthetic option could save homeowners about 73,000 litres of water each year.

“We’ve been in the marketplace for three years and there’s been a significant increase in business in that time, as people want to spend time on things other than looking after a lawn,” he said.

Installing synthetic grass for about five homes each day keeps the firm’s 12 field employees busy.

What everyone else is thinking

Diana

12/10/2010

A fully recycled synthetic grass lawn is about to be launched by national synthetic grass company Enduroturf. Keep an eye out for it.

Tim

19/08/2010

Natural lawn also has a cooling effect around the home, meaning you don't have to run air conditioners so hard! As well as converting CO2 into O2. All synthetic turf does is belch particulates and CO2 into the skies above China. These environmental claims really need some important scrutiny!

Tony

13/08/2010

So when everyone replaces there lawn with green synthetic,lawn, what air will we breathe, lawn generates oxygen and takes carbon dioxide out of the air, one small patch of lawn is worth 10 tree's in equivalent air regeneration.

Tim Swinden

10/08/2010

Walking on synthetic grass in bare feet is like having sex in a wet suite. Real life was meant to have weeds and wild flowers.

Jeff

04/08/2010

Of course the perceived sustainability of many products can be debated at length. At Green Planet Grass we certainly support any recycling methods that conserve energy and reduce the need to extract raw materials. Our synthetic lawns do incorporate recycled products wherever it is feasible and at the end of its long lifespan the lawn can also be recycled. Green Planet Grass certainly helps provide sustainable use of our water resources too. Our dams are just over a third full at this time with thousands of people caught flouting sprinkler bans so we know there are genuine benefits in cutting down on water use and lowering water bills. Many people also treat their lawns with chemical pesticides and fertilizers which will never be necessary with synthetic grass. Green Planet Grass lawns are manufactured in a responsible way and do not contain toxins.

Dan

green by chemicals only. if you want to be sustainable, let the carbon sink that is your lawn grow and get some exercise by caring for it. sustainabilty will come if we all recycyle as much as we possibly can. landfill levies will continue to rise as they fill over the last decade of their collective livespans. we throw so much to the tip we are just pushing up the prices of other things. manufacturers have been put on notice , if you make it you need to be responsible for its disposal, expect the costs to be passed onto you the consumer. Help hold back this runaway truck of cost rises by recycling, reusing and reducing. ps dog poo ticks to plastic of any colour even green.

Marie

03/08/2010

Yes it saves water coz you don't need to water it, BUT manufacturing it requires the use of a lot of water, it emits CO2 throughout its life cycle, and in most cases cannot be recycled... hardly a green product in my opinion!