Have a guess at the big garden improvement that’s proved so popular during the period of the UK’s national lockdown. As a hint, the reason why it’s proved so be so high up on the nation’s to do list is because everyone wants their own outside leisure space.
Now you know that it can’t be laying a patio because during lockdown all the retail stores selling patio slabs, sand, cement and all the other tools you needed to be able to do it yourself were closed. And it wasn’t something you could easily order.
And you also know that it had to be something that you could do yourself as everyone was told on March 23 to stay at home during the lockdown and that resulted in most of the self-employed tradespeople stopping supplying their services.
So that rules out those hard landscaping projects that had been on the back burner for months.
And that means it’s got to be something you can do yourself that involves supplies you can order online and doesn’t take much skill so that you can’t go wrong.
Have you guessed it?
The popular DIY garden improvement during lockdown has been laying fake turf. Because it quickly and easily delivers a visual transformation from ugly muddy mess to beautiful manicured green space. That has the added bonus, however tiny it is, of being multi-functional for everyone in the household. It’s good to look out of the window at. It’s good for playing or sitting out on.
But the downside is not for the people in the household who get the direct benefit but for rest of the people on the planet. Not only does fake turf has no environmental benefits it has clear environmental downsides.
In its production, fake turf emits carbon and uses fossil fuels and synthetic materials. Because it’s made of nylon or polypropylene or polyethylene, all non-natural materials.
And when it’s worn out and you need to replace it it won’t biodegrade and needs to go to landfill.
So it’s a classic case of short-term personal gain, long-term global pain that unless we know about we will all walk blindly into doing.
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