Astroturf and artificial grass has become increasingly popular among UK homeowners – especially those with dogs.
Warning for all UK households who have artificial grass
A warning has been issued for UK households who have artificial grass. Astroturf and artificial grass has become increasingly popular among UK homeowners – especially those with dogs.
But Plymouth University is warning UK households it could be bad for the environment. It said: “Artificial grass does not provide any food for living creatures. It restricts access to the soil beneath for burrowing insects and to the ground above for soil dwellers such as worms.
“It restricts access to natural materials like leaf litter and grass clippings – essential for feeding soil organisms like worms and microscopic animals and keeping the soil healthy.
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“Artificial grass reaches significantly greater temperatures than those reached by natural grass under the same weather conditions. Plastic lawns can overheat in hot weather making them unusable.
“Artificial grass can contribute to global warming by absorbing significantly more radiation than living grass and, to a lesser extent, by displacing living plants that could remove carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.”
Dr Mick Hanley, Associate Professor in Plant-Animal Interactions, wrote a thesis called “Is artificial grass bad for the environment?”, in Goodhouse Keeping, back in April 2024.
Dr Hanley said: “Inevitably, if you are putting what is ostensibly a plastic film across the soil, you are reducing the amount of rainfall entering the soil, so it’s going to dry out.
“Artificial lawns also negatively affect soil health as they limit the supply of both air and water to the soil beneath them, which impacts the tiny organisms that live in the soil as a result”.
Paul Hetherington, fundraising director for the charity Buglife, says artificial turf is far from an eco-friendly alternative to natural grass. “It blocks access to the soil beneath for burrowing insects, such as solitary bees, and the ground above for soil dwellers such as worms, which will be starved of food beneath it,” he says. “It provides food for absolutely no living creatures.”
Guy Barter, chief horticulturist at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), saysL “Hard landscaping can be very expensive, and people fancy a bit of green in a small garden. We’ve even laid a bit [of artificial grass] ourselves.
“But I don’t think that for all but specialised purposes that it really compares with [real] grass. Not only does it not provide any of the environmental benefits of grass – like soaking up moisture, home for insects, feeding birds, self-sustaining – its life isn’t that long. It gets trampled on and quite soon looks poor. It can’t be relaid or reseeded; it has to be rolled up, lifted and sent to landfill.”
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