Greener Grass at Harvard

Over the last few years, Harvard has taken numerous bold steps to create a more environmentally friendly campus, and the recent move to convert all of its grounds to organic grass is another impressive initiative. What started as a one-acre pilot project is now slated to be a full organic overhaul, an encouraging sign that the university is willing to seize worthy ideas that help the environment and save money.

In essence, Harvard is transforming the way it maintains all of its properties. Instead of using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, the gardeners now employ the natural organisms and processes of the soil for nourishment and replenishment. This change avoids the harmful effects of chemicals while also reducing the use of irrigation, saving two million gallons of water a year. In addition, the new growing methods have turned around the health of plants afflicted with serious diseases, such as the orchards at Elmwood, which were suffering from leaf spot and apple scab.

Harvard’s grass initiative is not only helping preserve the environment but also cutting unnecessary costs. The savings from reduced water usage and from composting the grass clippings, branches, leaves, and other material that used to have to be transported off campus amounts to $35,000 a year. In addition, now that Harvard is composting its own materials, it no longer has to buy fertilizers, saving another $10,000 a year. In a time of budgetary constraints for colleges throughout the country, not to mention our nation as a whole, Harvard is continually demonstrating that reducing our environmental footprint and saving money do not have to be mutually exclusive; rather, they are complimentary.

As with all institutions, there is still more Harvard can do to preserve the environment. Steps including turning off sprinklers during rainstorms, automatically placing computers on standby mode when unused, and increasing vegetarian dining choices can further reduce our footprint and help us achieve President Faust’s goal of reducing Harvard’s greenhouse-gas footprint 30 percent by 2016. That being said, creative ideas such as changing the treatment of our grass are encouraging signs that we will reach, if not surpass, this target.