Gardening : Scatter Cut Grass, Don’t Bag It

OK, confess. You got so wrapped up in the drought that you forgot to worry about the waste stream. How many eco-crises can one person juggle at a time?

But the garbage problem hasn’t gone away. We’re still losing landfill space the way babies lose teeth.

Los Angeles’ only city landfill for household waste will be capacity-packed in less than five years. And L.A. County landfills may be overloaded as early as 1992, waste-watchers say.

Within a decade, if we’re not careful, we’ll be up to our kneecaps in trash. And much of it will be green, the experts add.

That’s because grass cuttings constitute about 20% of all the solid waste that goes into landfills every year.

And that’s why Joan Edwards, director of integrated solid waste management in the city of Los Angeles, wants everyone to start recycling his or her grass.

To do this, you simply remove the bag from your lawn mower and let the grass cuttings fall where they may.

“Your lawn will look better than ever,” Edwards said. “You’ll save money on water and fertilizer bills. And you’ll save physical energy and time because you won’t have to stuff the grass into plastic bags and lug them out to the curb any more.”

From the city’s standpoint, of course, grass recycling means precious landfill space will be preserved for garbage of a less wholesome kind.

Each blade of grass is 90% water, Edwards explained. And if you mow frequently, so that the clippings are short, the grass will dehydrate quickly and deposit all its nutrients back into the soil. You won’t even know the clippings are there, she said.

Jim Merlino agrees. He is vice president of TransAction Co. Ltd., which owns the 40-acre Lincoln Place apartment community in Santa Monica. Twenty of the acres are landscaped, Merlino said, and until recently his maintenance crew would “cut the lawn, rake it, put the clippings in plastic bags and leave the bags for refuse haulers.”

“We produced about 200 tons of greenwaste annually at that place,” Merlino said.

Now the crew clips the grass and leaves the clippings on the lawn. “They fertilize the lawn and help prevent evaporation of water, so we don’t have to water as often,” he said.

“We also save money on plastic bags, in refuse hauling, and in the larger picture we save on fuel for the trucks, on emissions, and we preserve vital landfill space.”

Dick Ginevan, chief parks supervisor for L.A. City Department of Recreation and Parks, said grass recycling is not new to his department.

“We’ve always left the grass on the lawn when we mow,” Ginevan said, “and our parks and golf courses are beautiful. We grow healthy turf because we put back the nutrients from every blade of grass. The decomposing blades add humus to the soil, so we build a better soil structure over the years. We also water less because the grass clippings lying there insulate the ground.”

Are all these people right? Should we simplify our lives and let our grass clippings fall where they may?

Probably so, said agronomist John Rector, a turf expert at Pacific Sod Co. in Camarillo. “But there are some down sides too,” he said, taking a purist’s approach.

“The ideal mower for grass recycling is a mulching mower of the kind not technologically available yet,” he explained. “It is a mower that would have exceptionally sharp blades” and other capabilities relating to height adjustment.

Lacking such equipment, people recycling grass should “mow their lawns more frequently, so that the size of the clippings is small. Larger clippings will just lie on top of the turf” and not replenish the soil, he said.

And if you really want to recycle your greenwaste, the experts say, you should chop all your tree and shrub clippings into small pieces and use them for mulch in your flower beds. Imagine how much landfill you’ll help save.