243: SYNLawn Water-wise Landscaping

that's why I wanted to have you on, JD, because our last discussion about artificial turf, you know, I've done this podcast now for six years.

We're going on almost 250 episodes.

And, you know, all of our conversations are awesome.

They totally contribute to the broader dialogue.

But there's definitely a few that stick out.

And one of the ones that has really stuck out in my mind is our artificial turf grass conversation that we had about three years ago.

And it was due to a report that was done at the time by Western Resource Advocates looking at artificial turf because, you know, all of these cities were looking to replace their grass fields with artificial turf.

You know, homeowners, just like you said, there was a demand for it.

People wanted it.

And so this report kind of looked at, you know, kind of like the life cycle, these artificial turfs and kind of like the environmental impact of them.

And, you know, I think it primarily focused on petroleum based products.

But I was just and I'm not trying to be negative about the industry.

I just think it was learning more about what it was was really eye opening to me about like.

The amount of VOCs that come off, you know, artificial turf that's made by petroleum products.

It's basically ground up tires.

You know, the heat, the heat island that was coming off these artificial turf locations was crazy.

And then the thing that struck me the most is that the life cycle on these artificial turf applications was five to eight years if it's a municipal use.

It's a pretty short life cycle.

And then they had to be removed and replaced.

And often they ended up literally in Africa as like a tire buyer.

Yeah.

Not to be really awful, but it was shocking.

It was shocking to me.

Yeah.

And a lot of those are stemming from earlier applications of sports fields with the crumbed rubber infill.