Green Landscaping and Gardening - Artificial Turf

Does anyone have experience with some of the new artificial turfs that are available? Grass is difficult to grow and maintain without the use of significant amounts of water (very low supply) and chemicals. I thought this may be a viable solution for the "showcase" areas of my yard. Thoughts?

No experience, but I've recently read about it in the local paper here and thought it would be great. No watering, fertilizing, and mowing and it's always green! What could be better than that? :) Not only that, but in a city nearby there were incentives. I think there was a refund (a certain percentage-can't remember how much) for the homeowners who did this. Now, the cons would be that you would still have to maintain the artificial turf. Leaves, dirt and dust (and what-not) would still get on it. You would probably have to still use water to rinse it off though. You don't have to of course, but that's part of the maintenance.

If I had the $$$ to do it, I'd probably do it. Sure nothing beats nature and real stuff, but if it helps us with conserving water, electricity, gas, etc. I think it's great.

Artificial turf is made from chemicals, which is not a 'green' way to go. For water conservation in the landscape, plant native and drought resistant species. Minimize lawn by naturalizing the landscape and filling beds with species that require minimal care and water.

Twelvepole is right, synthetic turf is made out of petroleum-based products. Rubber infill, however, is made of recycled tires. To get an answer on the environment impact, one needs to assess the 'environmental costs' to produce turf, initial resources to install it and ongoing resources to maintain artificial turf against the 'environment savings' (water conservation, pesticides elimination, etc.) over the life of the turf.

Cost is not the only consideration. They have found that rubber mulch (which is also made with petrochemical products, btw) will leach chemicals into the ground water. The only "safe" mulch is natural mulch.

I've been replacing turf with drought resistant native groundcovers for about 3 years. I have about 2/3 of my yard done now, and I'm working on the front this year.

Of course, 'environemtal cost' includes more than monetary...for example it also includes net co2 emmissions of producing petro products. The 'environmental cost' of using recycled tires may need to be discounted to account for the use of 'retired tires'.

Can you cite those 'leaching' findings for me. I'd love to quantify this impact on my 'environmental cost' side of the analysis.

To eliminate confusion, instead of 'environmental cost' and 'cost benefit analysis', will use 'environmental impact study' to better capture the project's purpose of quantifying artificial turf's net impact on the environment.

Aside from all the envir-o-ment BS--I would not use it.
It is very expensive & it will be stolen w/in a week............

Oh, thanks for digging this post up, jhoward! I knew there was a reason I didn't like that artificial mulch!