Sounding Off: Earth Day’s Sellout to ChemLawn Stirs Angry Responses

Within minutes of our email to our SafeLawns members on Monday, a page was posted on Facebook denouncing the ChemLawns sponsorship of Earth Day: http://www.facebook.com/pages/STOP-TruGreen-from-Sponsoring-Earth-Day/369629442113?ref=nf. Comments have continued to flow in all week. The page urges everyone to contact Kathleen Rogers, President of Earth Day at rogers@earthday.net. Ms. Rogers has not yet responded to me personally, but she has apparently returned emails from several others who expressed dismay about their decision to take money from the worst environmental offender in the history of the landscape industry. She seems to believe that ChemLawn is making an earnest effort to be environmentally friendly — and cannot see the obvious truth that the company is using its affiliation with Earth Day to greenwash its image.

Here’s a link to the Toxics Action Center’s page about all the reasons to avoid ChemLawn: http://refusetousechemlawn.org/. And another link to a Planet Green post from today: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/trugreen-chemlawn-earth-day.html.

I found another interesting perspective on-line about Major League Baseball’s ill-conceived and similar sponsorship deal with Scott Miracle Gro. It’s from Tom Kelly, the co-founder of LawnDawg who has now denounced chemicals and has started FireBelly Organics. Tom knows better than anyone how unrealistic it is to aspire to a Major League Baseball type lawn around your own home: http://firebellylawncare.com/blog/.