| Dear
EarthTalk: I pruned back an overgrown bush
in my back yard last fall and now the soil around it is
covered in dandelions and other weeds. Is there any way
to get rid of these weeds without resorting to RoundUp and
other chemical herbicides?
-- Max S., Seattle, WA
| |
No
doubt, the most eco-friendly way to get rid of weeds
is to yank them out without the aid of poisons.
© Lastonien, courtesy Flickr |
Weeds
are nothing if not opportunistic. While you may not have
bargained for getting one form of eyesore (weeds) by clearing
another (an overgrown bush), dandelions and other fast-growing,
quickly spreading plants know no bounds when some new territory
opens up. They will colonize and spread out given the slightest
opening—after all, that‘s what defines them
as weeds.
Of
course, conventional herbicides such as Monsanto‘s
RoundUp will take down the weeds in a jiffy, but the negative
effects on people, animals and the environment may be both
profound and long-lasting. Independent studies of RoundUp
have implicated its primary ingredient, glyphosphate, as
well as some of its “inert” ingredients, in
liver damage, reproductive disorders and Non-Hodgkin‘s
Lymphoma, as well as in cardiovascular, gastrointestinal,
nerve and respiratory damage.
California‘s
Department of Pesticide Regulation reports that, year after
year, RoundUp is the number one cause of pesticide/herbicide-induced
illness and injury around that state. RoundUp is also blamed
for poisoning groundwater across the U.S. and beyond, as
well as for contributing to a 70 percent decrease in amphibian
biodiversity and a 90 percent decrease in tadpole numbers
in regions where it is used heavily.
Given
that you‘ll have to manually remove dead weeds from
your yard after applying RoundUp (or any other “post-emergent”
herbicide), why not just pull them up by hand in the first
place? No doubt, the most eco-friendly way to get rid of
weeds is to yank them out without the aid of poisons. Unfortunately,
many weeds have long deep roots which need to be pulled
completely if you don’t want them to grow back; if
need be, use a metal weed puller with a hooked end or a
mechanical grabber—available at any local garden supply
or hardware store—if you don’t want to have
to pull those very same weeds next year.
Garden
expert Dean Novosat of the Garden Doctor website suggests
giving the weed beds a good watering the night before you
pull weeds. “…the soil will be softened and
will yield the entire weed plant, root and all,” he
says. Another way to kill weeds, he says, is by pouring
boiling hot water over them.
Of
course, once you’ve killed or pulled up all those
weeds—and make sure you‘re thorough or else
it‘s waste of time—you‘ll want to make
sure new ones don‘t start showing up in their place.
Planting some regionally appropriate and ideally native
plants in place of the removed weeds would be a good first
step—check with a local nursery about what some good
choices might be for your neck of the woods.
Once
the area is cleared (and replanted), cover it with three
to six inches of mulch. Mulch forms a barrier between the
soil and the sun, depriving any new germinating weeds of
the sunlight they need to photosynthesize. Mulch is composed
of large chunky material such as wood chips and bark nuggets,
and works well for weed control also because it is low in
nutrients and thus won‘t fertilize plant starts below.
CONTACTS:
California
Department of Pesticide Regulation; The
Garden Doctor.
Dear
EarthTalk: How effective have plastic bag bans
and restrictions been on reducing plastic litter and other
problems associated with their proliferation? And is it
really better to use paper bags, which will just lead to
more deforestation?
-- Peter Lindsey, New Canaan, CT
| |
Americans
go through some 92 billion disposable plastic bags
each year.
© Kate Ter Haar, courtesy Flickr |
Plastic bags,
first introduced in the 1950s as a convenient way to store
food, have since developed into a global scourge, littering
roadsides, clogging sewer drains and landfills and getting
ingested by animals and marine life. And in recent years
we’ve discovered how they are so prolific that they
now comprise a significant portion of the plastic and other
garbage that has collected in huge ocean gyres far from
land.
A few countries
around the world—Bangladesh, China, India, Australia,
Greece, Ireland, Italy, Israel, South Africa, Taiwan and
Mumbai, among others—have taken stands against plastic
bags through taxing their usage or banning them outright.
The environmental think tank, Worldwatch Institute, reports
that China‘s decision to ban free plastic bags in
2008 has cut demand by some 40 billion bags, reduced plastic
bag usage there by 66 percent, and saved some 1.6 million
tons of petroleum.
In March 2007,
San Francisco became the first (and is still the only) major
U.S. city to implement an across-the-board ban on plastic
bags. Large supermarkets and pharmacies there had to ditch
plastic shopping bags by early 2008 in favor of paper bags
or those made from all-natural biodegradable cornstarch-based
plastic. Environmentalists are particularly fond of the
latter option for those who don‘t bring their own
grocery bags, as these cornstarch bags offer the biodegradability
of paper without the deforestation as well as the convenience
of plastic without the damage to ecosystems. San Francisco
officials had originally tried to work with retailers on
reducing plastic bag use voluntarily. But after a few years
of little or no cooperation, they decided to just institute
the ban on anything but biodegradable bags. The result has
been a 50 percent drop in plastic bag litter on the streets
since the ban took effect.
Los Angeles followed
suit and its city council voted in 2008 to ban plastic bags
beginning in July 2010—but the ban will only take
effect if the state of California doesn‘t follow through
on a statewide plan to impose a fee on shoppers who request
plastic bags. City council members in L.A. hope the ban
will spur consumers to carry their own reusable bags and
thus reduce the amount of plastic washing into the city‘s
storm drains and into the Pacific Ocean. Several other U.S.
cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore,
have considered outright bans like San Francisco‘s,
but each settled instead on plastic bag recycling programs
in the face of pressure from the plastics industry and retail
commercial interests.
While increased
demand for paper bags in the wake of plastic bag bans could
lead to more deforestation, most paper grocery bags in use
today are made from recycled content, not virgin wood. Also,
an added benefit of paper over petroleum-based plastic is
its biodegradability.
Americans go through some 92 billion disposable plastic
bags each year, and only five billion paper ones. If the
nation banned plastic bags it is likely that paper varieties
would only make up a small part of the difference, in light
of the proliferation of reusable canvas shopping bags as
well as the availability of biodegradable cornstarch plastic.
CONTACT:
Worldwatch
Institute. |
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