Parks and Gardens - Petrol-free Maintenance?

As I was waiting to pick up Miss 5 from school today, I watched as a team of two school grounds keepers (both gray-haired and around 60-ish at a guess) descended on the area I was waiting at, armed with a plethora of smoke-blowing, petrol-powered equipment. They made short work of the area - whizzing around on the ride-on mower, brushcutting the edges and cleaning up the edges with a massive blower - then jumped back in their mini-tractor and trailer and trundled off to the next sections of the grounds.

It got me thinking about all the public parks, gardens and sporting fields around my city (their website states that "Council maintains more than 345 parks that offer a variety of settings from more formal gardens to parklands, natural bushland and sportsgrounds"), not to mention all the school grounds in the area, and how reliant we are on oil and petrol to maintain these wonderful community assets.

We are often told that the suburban lawn is environmentally unsustainable - a big demand on our water supplies, it requires fertilising and needs regular trimming - and that we should get rid of them or minimise them as much as possible. Fair enough too. But imagine a life without social sporting activites? Even if you don't participate personally, a huge proportion of the Aussies I know regularly watch it on TV - cricket, rugby, AFL, golf. And most of us with kids value the benefits of an expanse of green grass (whether in our own backyard or the local park) for them to run off some energy. Pushing a hand-powered mower around a suburban backyard and trimming edges with hedge clippers is fine, but in light of the 2001 Swedish study that estimated a petrol-driven mower running for 30 minutes generates the same amount of air-borne particulates as a car travelling for 80 kilometres (!), how would/ should we manage large sporting fields for example? Electric mowers? Still uses electricity. That would be fine it if were 100% GreenPower I suppose, but Councils and schools only have very finite resources - how would/ could they justify the extra expense? Solar powered equipment?

Well, it seems that there actually are companies out there developing solar-electric equipment, including mowers and even tractors. How cool! I had futuristic visions of the two little gardeners I saw this afternoon (dressed in overalls a la "Lost In Space" for some reason) silently gliding up in a little electric shuttle, quietly whizzing around the grass with their little electric mower and then whispering off to the next sports field, LOL. Unfortunately though, while the big tractor companies in particular, have the designs and capability to commercially produce these tractors, they claim there is no demand for them :-( Sounds familiar...

Anyway, out of curiosity I had a look at my Council's website to see if they had anything about park maintenance. My Council promotes themselves as being environmentally-aware and has a "Greenhouse Action Plan" outlining their policies and initiatives on improving the sustainability of the city. But nowhere in their documentation could I find anything about how they aim to improve parks and gardens management unfortunately. To be fair, they have a comprehensive policy and action plan for retaining, rehabilitating and expanding their native vegetation habitats (including in public parks), and for preserving and planting trees, both in public and private spaces, so perhaps the energy use required to maintain these assets is currently outweighed by their benefits. I'd probably agree with that, but ultimately the bite is going to be on in the oil supply department, and I see no alternatives even being discussed?

And as far as NOT actually mowing grass any more goes - whilst there are alternatives to the usual suburban lawn grass species that don't need mowing they don't tend to handle foot traffic very well. Perhaps when the pressure is *really* on, someone (or company, in reality) will develop a no-mow, drought-resistant, heavy foot-traffic-resistant (non-synthetic!) grass suitable for these areas, LOL.