I actually think instead of just getting rid of lawn care businesses - horrible, huge cause of totally needless gas and noise pollution, typically requires/fosters few to no skills outside of cut grass & eliminate anything not grass & maybe trim bush into a circle regardless of if thats good for that bush/tree - we should implement free training programs and incentives for any "lawn care" company or individual to learn actual, useful skills in native habitat landscaping, arborist care, and integrated pest management.
Thats not to say cutting grass is never going to be important, theres still so many uses for a flat lawn and area for activities, but those should be designated spaces and not the majority of land around every single house and apartment. And there's a lot more that could be looked at there - flagrant use of herbicide or insecticides, especially where the problem is probably misdiagnosed or blown out of proportion (looking at you, most people w a "crane fly problem"), removal of all "weeds" and ground cover even if theyre native or ten times more helpful to everything around it than grass. Teenagers being given thwap thwap cut anything they touch machines and not being properly taught to not use those to cut through the cambium of every surrounding bush, or peoples electric and wifi lines, or literally all flowers - and it not mattering bc for a lot of the people who can AFFORD lawn care they can also afford those losses, but some of us just live or rent on the property and cant afford to arbitrarily have things destroyed bc they genuinely dont realize how harmful cutting that cambium layer IS or that those native bulbs now CANNOT regrow or flower.
The low barrier for entry means so much of the business is full of people who don't currently have other options or are unable to work in other fields bc of our shitass government. Its clear to everyone with data and ears that they should be only using electronic machines where at all possible, but if we legislate that without huge incentive and ways to afford that all you do is criminalize the poorest businesses.
Its clear to anyone who's done the research that we need to hugely cut down on lawns for a million reasons (uses tons of water, increases runoff, nitrogen pollution, destruction of the soil itself, loss of habitat, cant take in water, monocultured wasteland for food or cover, hot and no shade, no diversity, main competitors are invasive toxic guys commonly) but people are slow on the uptake and loss of status symbol, along with just not knowing how to do it or having people who could manage it properly - because if you bring an average lawn crew out to take care of a mixed lawn w native flowers in even CLEARLY SEPARATE areas or bushes etc they will just. Cut it down. Ive watched it. For years. Even when talked to and told hey this is the spot w the flowers. Even w posts they have to physically drive over to do it. Bc why try harder when you aren't being paid for anything but just cut it all down as quickly as possible, and you just simply do not know about this shit and are not holding the one or two exceptions to "just a lawn" in your mind.
Give people (LOW BARRIER INCENTIVIZED and not requiring a fucking social) training on how to ACTUALLY take care of a green space in any healthy way whatsoever. On basic pruning besides "shape of a circle" and managing diseases and sterilizing tools. On advice they can give on mow-less lawns that wont put them out of business, or IPM instead of yeah dump a ton of insecticide on that shit. Give them means to access electronic replacements for 20 yr old gas machines we all fucking hate and have to hear every goddamn day doing the useless for everyone work of leaf blowing every blade of grass and nitrogen to be taken off the property. Let them get paid more bc 1) people dont have to risk a shitton of fines or constant physical labor to manage a lawn they dont need and cant pay for and 2) theyd have researched education and good fucking advice to be giving you
Give people more goddamn resources and tools and a loooooooooot of problems start fixing themselves overnight, that otherwise criminalizing just creates more of
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