Poison For the Good of Us All

As I have chronicled in this space, my wife and I are slowly trying to replace our front lawn with native plant species. Each year we tarp off a section of grass and, in about 6-8 months, we pull back the tarps to dig out the roots of the dead grass. We then till the soil and begin the process of transplanting native species like salmonberry bushes, red flowering currents, salal, columbine, native strawberries and assorted ferns (to name just a few).

We undertook this same process when we lived in Salem, Oregon. In fact, by the time we sold our home in 2005, the entirety of what was once the front lawn had been turned into a native garden!

As the individual who performs most of the labor for this endeavor, I have been approached by well-meaning neighbors in both locales. Why are you employing such a labor-intensive process, they have wanted to know. Why not speed up the project by using the pesticide, Roundup? It will kill your grass quickly, they have reported, and it is safe for the environment to boot!

Safe for the environment?

According to a new report from Greenpeace,

One of the main ingredients of Roundup, as well as several other herbicides, is a chemical known as glyphosate. Numerous studies covered in the report associate exposure to glyphosate with cancer, birth defects and neurological illnesses (including Parkinson’s). Alarmingly, lab testing suggests that glyphosate can cause damage to cells, including human embryo cells. Other studies mentioned in the report indicate that glyphosate may be a gender-bender chemical that interferes with our hormonal balance.

The environmental impacts of glyphosate are not much better with evidence suggesting that the chemical has a damaging impact on our rivers and on the animals that live in them. It also disrupts nutrients in soil, exposing plants (that are not weeds) to disease and could end up contaminating drinking water...

It is interesting, because I steadfastly refuse to spray poison on my property, that many of my neighbors think I'm weird and, maybe, a holdover hippie from the 60s and 70s! To my way of thinking, it's weird to be unconcerned with the health risks to themselves and their families as they blithely apply Roundup throughout their yards.

I am thinking about how my actions will impact others -- the ripple effect we discuss frequently in relation to philosophical Taoism. They aren't giving the ripple effect the slightest credence. They simply want to kill weeds and appear unconcerned with the ramifications their actions may produce.