There’s a growing cultural divide in suburbia, and it speaks volumes about the real-life implications of being a conscious consumer. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal describes the problem: now that pesticides and herbicides have been strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease and cancer, will Americans be willing to give up their preternaturally green and weedless lawns? Natural lawn care is still a tiny segment of the $24 billion US lawn and garden market, but as with organic food, it’s been growing at double-digit rates for the last five years. The interesting thing about the lawn issue (as opposed to organic food) is that it’s got a second-hand smoke quality to it — people are not only concerned about their own lawns, but about their neighbors’. Kids and pets run freely in suburbia, and conscious consumers — ever-vigilant about controlling what goes into their families’ bodies — would like to ban toxic lawn chemicals outright. As progressive communities across the US are enacting local laws or watchdog committees to do just this, an odd culture clash emerges: some people are horrified by the thought of their kids absorbing toxic chemicals from their neighbors’ lawns, and others are equally horrified by the thought of their lawns being corrupted by weeds from their neighbors’ (more natural) lawns.

As green moves further into the mainstream, we predict that the lawn issue will become a touchstone for issues of health and personal sacrifice related to going green. Americans love their lawns, and they’re not necessarily ready to question their lawn habits, or spend the time and money necessary to switch over to natural lawn care. But this is one green issue that may be forced upon people before they’re ready to make the switch, and it’ll be interesting to see how the turf wars play out.

Meanwhile, a modest proposal.