No matter what kind of landscape you have, there are labor costs to maintain it. Whether you’ve got a beautiful, edible food forest or acres and acres of grass, somebody has to get out there and prune tree limbs, clear invasive plants, or hop on a lawn mower and cut the grass. However, the type of landscape does impact what kind of job has to be done and whether that job is environmentally friendly or not.
Roots Down believes in the power of Productive Urban Landscapes to create better jobs and better community. Simply put, a field of grass that is mowed and sprayed with synthetic herbicides and pesticides is inaccessible to the community, potentially dangerous, and offers little to nothing in return. We’ve already seen numerous lawsuits against the makers of Round-up, a synthetic herbicide, for causing cancer. Additionally, lawn mowers are the leading cause of amputations for children in America. These jobs don’t require any community engagement or particular skills of any note, meaning they are often low wage jobs with little pathway to moving up. Plus, have you ever tried to eat grass?
On the other hand, Productive Urban Landscapes require little to no synthetic chemicals or gas-powered equipment, and maintaining them requires a more intentional type of work, using specialized knowledge about plant, animal, and fungal species, plus an ability to engage the community so they know how to support and benefit from the landscape. Rather than carrying a leaf blower on your back all day, PUL's allow landscapers to spend their days creating positive impact for the community, the environment, and their neighbors .
Here are the top 5 ways Roots Down creates Green Jobs.
Reducing carbon-fueled jobs.
Gasoline-powered landscaping equipment is loud, dirty, and expensive. While we're aware that modern landscaping makes their use practically necessary, we're working toward a world where fossil fuels will no longer have a role in the landscaping industry. By replacing grass-based landscapes with different species that are native or edible, PUL's create room for a new type of green job, landscaping that doesn’t rely on burning carbon, but instead sequesters it in the ground for generations.
Outdoor education.
Quick, what are five things you can learn from a field full of grass? Pretty tough question to answer. Now, think about a forest. What are five things you can learn from a forest? With so many species of bugs, birds, and plants in a forest, there are so many things to learn! Especially following the pandemic, people are looking for more and more ways to safely learn outdoors. Productive Urban Landscapes create significantly more opportunities for outdoor education than grass and with more spaces for learning, what other types of green jobs could be created?
Community food programs.
If you’ve read our blog about the tragedy of our food system, you’ll know the biggest issue is logistics and distribution. When food is grown so far away from the people who're consuming it, feeding people in need is a big challenge we often fail to meet. That’s even more true with fresh, healthy food. By growing as much food as we can in urban areas, we create new opportunities for green jobs to feed hungry people. When we have an abundance of local food, we’ll also need people to harvest, process, and distribute it. But instead of that being an international system that delivers unhealthy food fueled by oil, it’ll be a hyper-local system that distributes fresh food straight from the tree, vine, or ground.
Upward Mobility.
Since Productive Urban Landscapes require some level of specialized knowledge about plants, animals, fungus, and the local community, there are numerous ways to create upward mobility in the landscaping industry. Rather than something as simple as mowing and blowing, there are levels of knowledge and experience that workers can obtain in order to move up the job ladder. If we only have landscapes full of grass, there isn’t really any opportunity for upward mobility. Once you’ve mowed one landscape, you’ve pretty much mowed them all. That's why we've developed the Grower Program, a job training and certification pathway for landscapers to get their footing in the ecological landscaping industry. By providing training and access to clients, the Grower Program allows landscapers of all stripes to start making change in their own communities.
Value Added Producers.
One apple tree produces an average of 160 pounds of fruit per year. That’s a lot of apples! The problem is, they all come at one time, and there’s pretty much zero chance that you can eat 160 pounds of apples in the 4-6 week period they're producing. That’s where value added producers come into play. That’s a technical term for anyone who takes a raw product and improves it, like turning lemons into lemonade. With fields full of grass, there’s pretty much no value to be added. Fruit, veggies and herbs create opportunities for jams, spice mixes, teas, oils, and, of course, pies.
Comments