How Gardening Responsibly Can Help Our World
Overusing water is something that happens often within the garden, as well as on commercial farms. When these practices are adopted by others, massive amounts of water become wasted. On top of this, people will often use pesticides to help their garden grow, unaware of the widespread and dangerous effects that these chemicals are having on our environment, our food, and even us. Sometimes, the overuse of water and the misuse of pesticides can work together to make the situation even more hazardous. However, this is by no means an unsolvable problem. There are ways to responsibly garden. These responsible gardening practices are beneficial for us, the world around us, and public health.
We live in a world where water is becoming more and more valuable, as with a growing population, the demand for it becomes higher. This is because we have a finite amount; only 1% of the earth’s water is fresh and available to us. However, we are still practicing many techniques that waste millions of gallons of water. If one waters their lawn on a hot day, they could be losing around 50%[1] of the water from their sprinklers to evaporation. Some people also favor over watering their lawns. For example, if someone runs their sprinkler for 2 hours, they are wasting around 500 gallons of water.[2] However, home gardening systems are not (individually) the largest offenders. Major commercial farms will use similar sprinkler systems, which will waste far more water, since they are covering areas that could be hundreds of acres across. These numbers are beginning to add up, and having enough clean water is starting to become a legitimate concern for the world. Unfortunately, wasting copious amounts of water is not the only thing that faulty gardening and agricultural practices are doing. There is a threat that is possibly far worse.
Pesticides are often used to maintain a commercial garden by killing off the pests within it. Pesticides present a major threat to our environment. Pesticides themselves are a poison, designed to kill certain types of organisms that might interfere with the growing of a garden. However, these pesticides will often become airborne, and then affect other organisms. Since they spread like this, they are very difficult to get rid of, and have spawned into multiple strains. Among the organisms these strains affect are flowers. When these plants get infected, the creatures that pollinate them die, such as bees and butterflies.
As the Global Healing Center puts it, “Pesticides are a major threat to bees. The systemic poisoning of flowers has killed scores of bees. We're simply losing too many of them… More than 25% of the bee colonies died in winter 2006/07. That translates to a loss of tens of billions of bees. And it's estimated that this loss will negatively impact the agricultural economy to the tune of $8 to $12 billion.”[3] These are just a few of the adverse effects that pesticides have on the world around us, which as can be seen, can also have very damaging effects on our economy. Not to mention, 33% of our crops are dependant on bees, which doesn’t have a terrific outcome for those who are dependant on food to live. Besides bees, high levels pesticides have also been exposed to over 600 million birds, 67 million of which have died.[4] That’s 10% of the bird population. And that’s just in the U.S.A.
However, that’s not all. There are major health risks associated with pesticides, as well. Some of the most deadly poisons known to man are contained in pesticides, and although regulated, the effects can still be seen. Many pesticides contain neurotoxins, which can damage brain activity. This has been known to affect the growth and development of fetuses, with a 70% increase in the chance of getting Parkinson’s disease.[3] The risk is not only associated with the first exposure to pesticides; sometimes they build up in the body, to the point where they can become fatal. In China, an estimated 500,000 people a year are adversely affected by pesticide poisoning. Also, the production of pesticides has been known to kill. Another fact from the GHS states, “One disaster at a pesticide manufacturing plant was in Bhopal, India. The plant accidentally released 40 tons of an intermediate chemical gas, methyl isocyanate, used to produce some pesticides. In that disaster, nearly 3,000 people were killed immediately, overall approximately 15,000 deaths occurred. Today nearly 100,000 people suffer from mild to severe permanent damage as a result of that disaster.”[3]
Wasteful water practices and pesticides, when combined, have adverse affects of their own. When someone uses pesticides on their lawn, and then over waters, those pesticides make it into our water system. This contaminates our public water supply, and also gets into our ocean, and into the fish that we eat. Although there are no known numbers on how many fish die of this, it is known that there are dead zones in the ocean that span thousands of square miles across,[4] which are barren of life due to all the pesticides dumped into them. This process ensures that we cannot escape from these poisons. They go into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat – no matter whether the food was farmed or fished.
There are a few solutions to all of this. Firstly, people can stop using pesticides on their lawn. This would stop adding more pesticides to our system, and allow the current levels to decline. We would then begin to see lower levels in all sorts of diseases, such as cancer or Parkinson’s. Next, people can stop over watering. A lawn only needs water that goes down a few centimeters to get to the root. If puddles start collecting on top, then the lawn is being over watered. People should try to water in the morning or evening if it is going to be a hot day, so that the water won’t be lost to evaporation. EarthEasy suggests mulch[2] to slow the evaporation of moisture within the soil. One of the advantages of Mulch is that it discourages weed growth. One would only need to add two to four inches of any kind of organic material (just as bark mulch or compost), then to press down on the mulch, and keep any moisture from escaping.
Finally, there is a solution that can hit 2 birds with one stone: drip irrigation. This is a highly efficient watering system, which only releases single drops of water at a time in multiple areas of a garden. This ensures that there won’t be any excessive water used, and almost none of it will be lost to evaporation. It is known to conserve both money and water, and help the plants grow better, as well. Also, if one chooses to use pesticides on their garden – although it is not ideal – there is no runoff with drip irrigation, which ensures that the pesticides won’t enter the water system. No matter which of the aforementioned options one might choose, these recommended gardening practices would all be beneficial to our standard of living, our way of life, and our world.
Annotated Bibliography
[1] Hussein M. Abo-Ghobar, Agricultural Engineering Department; College of Agriculture; King Saud University, Evaporation and Drift Losses From Sprinkler Irrigation Systems Under Hot And Dry Conditions, http://digital.library.ksu.edu.sa/V5M79R1505.pdf, 1993
[2] EarthEasy, Water Conservation: 25 Ways to Conserve Water in the Home and in the Yard, http://www.eartheasy.com/live_water_saving.htm, 2009
[3] Global Healing Center, The Effects of Pesticides, http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/effects-of-pesticides.html, 2009
[4] Michelle Donahue, The Viewspaper, Five Billion Pounds of Pesticides, http://theviewspaper.net/five-billion-pounds-of-pesticides/, 6/8/09
Richard G. Allen, Geoflow, Subsurface Drip Irrigation Can Reduce Pollution, http://www.geoflow.com/wastewater/sdi.htm, 7/23/09 United States Environmental
Protection Agency, Pesticides: Health and Safety, Human Health Issues, http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/health/human.htm, 5/11/09
Matt Goering, ServiceMagic, Water Efficiently With a Home Irrigation System, http://www.servicemagic.com/article.show.Water-Efficiently-with-a-Home-Irrigation-System.14246.html, 2009
United States Environmental Protection Agency, Pesticides: Controlling Pests, Lawn and Garden, http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/controlling/garden.htm, 8/7/09
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment