Transform Your Yard, Save the Planet
By Justin West
Transform Your Yard, Save the Planet
By Justin West
The Impact of Yards
Most homeowners don’t know that one of their largest negative impacts, and one of their largest opportunities to create positive environmental impacts, is in their yard.
Yards add up. In the United States alone, yards make up over 40 million acres–roughly the size of the entire state of Wisconsin! This is the largest irrigated crop in the United States, supporting a $116 billion landscaping industry annually.
The staggering impact of landscaping:
10 times as many chemicals per acre are dumped on lawns as industrial agriculture.
Estimates vary from 16 billion to 41 billion pounds of CO2 being emitted from lawnmowers every year.
More gas is spilled annually refilling lawn equipment than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Yard waste is estimated to make up 20 to 50% of US landfills.
Turf grasses have extremely short roots with minimal carbon storage capability relative to similar native plants.
Construction starts by removing topsoil which holds water and carbon, leading to increased stormwater runoff damage.
Most landscaping plants are non-native and provide no wildlife or pollinator value–or worse–are invasive and spread to destroy local ecosystems.
How did we get here? Grass lawns were a sign of wealth in England beginning in the 1600s. Those with land and sheep were surrounded by lawn. That aesthetic carried over into the modern world, and hugely profitable industries have been built around mowing, spraying, and irrigating lawns.
There is a better way.
The Potential of Home Ecosystems
Native ecosystem landscaping creates beautiful, lush spaces filled with life. These landscapes have huge environmental benefits, increase property values, and can even provide sustainable food.
The challenge is that it takes deep knowledge and years of experience to create them through trial and error. This challenge is why we created ThriveLot.com, to match local ecosystem experts with projects and to build the technology so that soon, anyone will be able to create a lush ecosystem with ease.
There are three major pillars to establish a sustainable ecosystem: soil, biodiversity, and interconnection.
How to create a sustainable ecosystem in your yard
Soil
Healthy soil is filled with organic matter, microorganisms feeding on that organic matter and digesting it into useful nutrients, and fungal networks passing those nutrients between plants in a deepening web of life–aka stored carbon–all underground.
Healthy soil can support a diversity and density of plant species without chemical fertilizers, and plants living in deep soil can thrive in drought without irrigation because of the water-retaining magic of carbon.
Soil building technique varies depending on location and goals. Generally, it involves thickly layering organic matter like compost, mulch, and manure.
Biodiversity
The healthiest, richest ecosystems like the Amazon Rainforest are unbelievably biodiverse. No one has to maintain the Amazon rainforest or spray fertilizers or pesticides on it.
When selecting biodiverse plants, bias toward perennials. Perennial plants are the key to a sustainable native ecosystem with minimal effort. There are even thousands of species, mostly forgotten, of incredibly nutritious, perennial edible plants. A single Mulberry tree can produce over 600 pounds of fruit per year. It requires no maintenance and can produce for over 300 years. That’s sustainable food!
This is why the average Thrive Lot project has 55 unique plant species on ⅓ of an acre, and sometimes over 100 unique species!
Interconnection
Every plant has a preference for soil, sunlight, water levels, wind tolerance, and even how it interacts with its neighbors. Putting the right plant in the right place is critical for health and sustainability. If done correctly, it will lead to a beautiful, layered, lush aesthetic with blooms throughout the year.
Some plants pull nitrogen out of the air or digest minerals in the soil to feed the other plants around them. Others attract predatory insects that eat the insects that would have eaten your plants. Putting the right plant in the right place can create multiple layers of symbiosis and long-term natural resilience.
ThriveLot.com can help navigate this process and connect you with a local expert to help. If you want to DIY, we recommend books like Gaia’s Garden and taking a local permaculture design course.
The Impact of Home Ecosystems
So how much of a difference can my lawn make anyhow? According to estimations from The Carbon Farming Solution, multi-strata agroforestry systems, like the sustainable ecosystems installed by Thrive Lot, can store 81-120 tons of carbon per acre. That means the average quarter-acre US residential lot, leaving room for the house, can store 16-24 tons of carbon, or enough to offset the annual emission of 4 people globally!
Remember that carbon in the soil retains water, cooling the land, preventing drought, and reducing stormwater runoff. The average quarter-acre residential lot can store an additional 85,000 gallons of water–the equivalent of 31 concrete mixer truck tanks, all stored in the magic of living soil and plants!
Being surrounded by lush, natural beauty also increases physical and psychological well-being, and has a huge impact on behavioral, social, and mental health in children.
Ecosystems drive economic value too. A study by Virginia Tech University showed a diversity of mature plants adds 15% to a home’s value!
What would this mean at the scale of 40 million acres in the US alone?
3.2 to 4.8 gigatons of carbon stored in soil, plants, birds, and bees. That is a massive climate impact.
Cleaner water with less runoff at the scale of 14 trillions of gallons of water held on the land, cooling it, turning into clouds to cool other areas, creating life. That’s more than California’s entire annual water deficit.
$6 trillion in real estate value creation from improved property values.
Alongside all this: protecting biodiversity, creating local jobs, and even generating hyper-localized food resilience.
What are you waiting for? Get growing! Visit ThriveLot.com for help from a local expert. If we aren’t in your area, we will be!
✍️The Draw-down
Weekly climate art! This week, we’re featuring Nicole Kelner, check her out on twitter.
🔎Fresh Takes
Each week, The Regenerates will surface a climate campaign or stories to be told—elevating why it works (or doesn't) from a communications and marketing lens.
This IG post from Fashion Revolution Canada is a brilliant illustration of how the engine of consumerism needs to evolve. It calls out the big difference between what people think “sustainable fashion” is (pricy linen sack dresses) versus what it is: buying less and taking better care of the things you already own. In other words: changing how and why we buy, not simply what we buy. It got us thinking about how leading marketers already think like this. Their approach to brands goes beyond the scope of product—instead, cultivating relationships with their customers that create fertile ground for encouraging new behaviors. Read more
🍿Climate Action of the Week
Want to do more? Sign up for the next Climate Changemakers Hour of Action here.
This is our final week pushing for clean electricity tax incentives in the Build Back Better Act, which the Senate has yet to act on. The clean electricity tax incentives passed by the House could reduce power-sector emissions by up to 73%. Call, email, and Tweet at your senators to urge them to pass this transformational policy. We have a handy tool to do it!
🤑Re-Fi Round-Up
Learn about re-fi news around the world from Toucan Protocol’s team.
President Biden issued an executive order on cryptocurrencies that included climate implications, asking for agencies to look at both potentially positive and negative implications of blockchain technologies on climate change. In particular, the order called on US Federal agencies to investigate the energy impact of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies "to impede or advance efforts to tackle climate change at home and abroad" as well as "potential uses of blockchain that could support monitoring or mitigating technologies to climate impacts, such as exchanging of liabilities for greenhouse gas emissions, water, and other natural or environmental assets". Check out the executive order here.
🎙Startup Series
This week, Jason caught up with Maricel Saenz, Co-Founder & CEO of Compound Foods. Compound Foods is a food-tech startup recreating coffee without coffee beans. Maricel and Compound aim to create a sustainable coffee that reduces the negative environmental impact on the planet and ensures we have coffee for the foreseeable future.
✨ Highlights
Climate Jobs
For more open positions, check out the #j-climatejobs channel in MCJ Slack.
Yard Stick is hiring an Electrical Engineer
TrueCircle is hiring for both engineering and non engineering roles (remote roles and London HQ roles)
CrossBoundary is looking for a Deputy Head of Natural Capital. Flexible location, with preference for Washington DC, London, or Nairobi.
Heirloom is looking for a marketing and comms manager in SF/Bay Area
Raptor Maps is looking for a People Operations Coordinator (Remote)
OhmConnect just started hiring for a Director of Partnerships
Lumen Energy is hiring for a Sales & Partnerships role
Capital Good Fund is looking for an Energy Concierge to help as we reach out to low to moderate-income communities in Massachusetts
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