Most of you by now know I’m not a big fan of AstroTurf. I think AstroTurf belongs inside mini football fields and shouldn’t be used to beautify Kuwait. If you want to use AstroTurf to beautify the backstreets of Jabriya, sure, I guess I might understand the reasoning behind that. But, using AstroTurf on a monumental location like the Sheraton Roundabout? That I have a major problem with.
Yesterday, while driving around the Sheraton roundabout I noticed workers were busy behind the fence working on the landscaping and I also noticed super bright green grass. I thought to myself no way, they can’t be using AstroTurf are they? So I parked my car in the nearest parking lot and decided to cross the busy street and take a closer look. Turns out instead of planting real grass in the roundabout they’ve decided to go with the tacky and flat looking AstroTurf.
The irony is the landscapers have large signs all around the roundabout stating “We Keep Kuwait Green and Beautiful. Go Green Save Earth”. I guess by keeping Kuwait green they meant literally the color green. On the bright side they’re using real palm trees and flowers so I guess thats a plus.
43 replies on “Sheraton roundabout to use AstroTurf”
real grass requires lost of water… water that we don’t have or can barely afford. economically this may be cheaper.
Yes real grass does need water. I guess we could just kill all the real plants around Kuwait and replace them with the more economical fake stuff. Or how about we stop planting trees in the middle of the desert around the Kuwaiti border and instead use the water saved from that to water greenery in the city. https://248am.com/mark/kuwait/kuwait-energy-green-wall-documentary/
The first comment on that link is mine as well… which you responded to as well. I guess u know my opinion on that subject too 🙂
“Barely afford”
Do you know Kuwait has one of the most advanced plants in the world for purification of waste water? It’s drinkable but people don’t like the idea of drinking purified waste water so they use it to water plants.
Did you know desalination is expensive as hell and Kuwait needs to learn to conserve because it’s still not a great choice?
Epic FAIL!
Atleast its green and sort of beautiful. 😛
will they allow us to play football there?
i guess theyre saving water but it looks ugly and i hate it
kuwait is one of the richest countries on earth, and we have a coast line of 500km… build more desalination plants
money + water = real green grass everywhere
Desalination is more expensive than recycling wastewater, and Desalination actually really messes up the coastal environment. We already have a lot of plants in a very small area.
Saving water is saving the environment and it is the green way to go.
It you replace the environment with astroturf then you’ve killed the environment and that’s not green.
Actually Mark saving water by not planting real grass and using fake is more environmentally friendly.
Why? Because to produce clean water in kuwait is a very costly procedure that requires a lot of energy. Energy from burning oil that pollutes the environment.
I’m not sayng don’t plant at all… I’m saying plant plants that suit our environment ( desert plants, palm trees, etc) I think it called bioscaping.
What you’re saying would make sense if any plant could survive without watering. Problem is Kuwait is a desert and they all need watering. But in any case if you care that much about pollution and the environment maybe you should do something about the pollution from the busses, the garbage overspilling everywhere, the sewage overflowing, the illegal wildlife hunting etc.. etc.. etc..
True, I completely agree. But some plants need much more watering than others.
Actually I am doing an environmental project that focuses on renewable energy and marine ecosystems 🙂
Your attack on Nixon seems unfair. He was correctly pointing out that the environmental cost of planting real grass in a desert (where production of pure water is indirectly dependent on burning fossil fuels) far outweighs the environmental benefits. He did not argue that astro-turf looks better.
Whether Nixon actually does anything to protect the environment is irrelevant to this discussion.
I know what Nixon was pointing out, what I was highlighting was the fact that
1) Kuwait is a desert and any plant would need watering to survive
2) If we cared about the environment then there are a whole bunch of more important things we should fix and not just replace the real grass on the sheraton roundabout with fake grass
i can totally assure u mr nixon that the folks at the municipality weren’t considering pollution or irrigation when they were deciding. my bets are that this project has taken a toll on the government for delaying its completion for years, so now its get the job done as fast as u can…….quick fix like everything else..
I honestly don’t understand who would be pro tacky plastic carpet grass over real living grass.
Neither do I. There are natural grasses that are not that water intensive.
I totally feel they should have gone with real grass, but then again when I think of this particular spot and the number of people who use it as a picnic hangout and general meeting point on weekends, I think fake grass would be the most logical way to go. Maintaining real grass would be a nightmare, unless they’d put up a fence and not let anyone on the roundabout.
I was upset with how much brick they were using, and today I noticed the bs astroturph and hoped I was wrong. With monkeys making decisions, the world is bound to go bananas.
You’d think people would prefer real grass over fake grass but as you can see from the comments there are actually people who prefer fake grass. You know somethings wrong when people start arguing about how fake grass is better than real grass.
ALL civilised people like real grass.
+1
If I had the option of plants grass would be my last choice. Evergreen trees are the best.
But at least I prefer AstroTurf over bricks, unless it’s beautifully decorated.
but before anybody attacks me… i meant that plants are the best option, just not grass.
also mark: are you sure they are using astroturf, i just re-read the article and it seems that u assumed it without asking anybody.
Dude I took the pics, yes it’s take grass you can even see the different carpet pieces in the photo.
Yes I understand it looks really like fake grass, I’m not trying to call u a liar or being rude. It’s just we are not 100% sure it’s fake just by judging from the pictures.
Just think of the carbon footprint just to maintain a real grass on that area which sees a lot of foot traffic on weekends. Real grass won’t survive, and they have to keep on replacing it.
Sometimes, we have to use that thing on top of our necks to see which “benefit” we get out of things.
It does not mean simply because this country has a lot of money, it should put uo with every tree-hugging person’s wish that everything should be “environmentally green”.
i think u should give ur advise to the folks at the UK parliament to consider the same for Hyde Park and Central Park at NYC…who knows, maybe ur reasoning could apply to all the parks in the world to start considering the logic of carbon footprint and why real grass shouldn’t be used… seriously?!
real grass would be better period.
Do you know what happens to fake grass (astro turf) when its trampled by hundreds and thousands of feet every week? it gets flattened down and torn and dirty. So lets see how “nice” it looks a few weeks after its opened to the public. lets see how often they replace the fake grass, its will have to be done at least yearly.
Even the high quality fake grass is not really supposed to be used in areas where people are going to walk on it too much. Its intended for use as trim and boarder.
The only person happy about this is the importer/dealer of the fake grass.
Think of it this way, we can all be proud of the cheap excuse for landscaping that all the visitors and dignitaries will see when they come to stay at the Sheraton several times a year.
Proud to be a Kuwaiti. FacePalm
With fake grass will come fake trees and I hope we can then breathe some fake air as the fake greenery is not going to produce any oxygen.
I agree that the roundabout looks really fake. I do like the turf in the middle of roads (like on Damascus street) because of the way it looked before for years as they tried to make grass grow and stay – I think the car fumes killed it off because people didn’t really go walking or picnicing in the middle of the road. So for places that aren’t people-friendly, I think the turf works better for the long run; but on the seaside and parks and other places where kids play and people sit, I think they should use real grass. I think that would be a compromise between the real & fake grass parties.
PS – I truly LOVE real grass, and would love to have it everywhere in Kuwait, but it just doesn’t seem feasible at the present time.
https://hands4others.org/why-water
I think they have used AstroTurf because the people who usually sit there don’t respect nature and taking care of it. But I really hoped they used a natural grass because pollution and heat need to be decreased specially in that area. It’s the center of the country.
Forcing the desert to produce lawns and other water-intensive plants is a long-term environmental disaster and a pointless luxury. It is not just the waste of scarce resources in desalinating water, it is also the damage being done to the soil and current precious water table. The water used for irrigation is relatively high in salts (it’s a by-product from desalination). These salts, along with the increasingly intensive amounts of artificial chemical fertiliser required to force soil of ever-deteriorating quality to produce succulent plants, render the soil ever less productive. More alarmingly the salts and chemicals leach down into the below-ground water table (a very important part of the desert ecosystem) and progressively poison it.
Cities in the desert west of the US – hardly a bastion of progressive environmental thinking – have real;ised this and are ripping up their lwans and replacing them with more appropriate planting and landscaping. I hope this happens in the Gulf soon before all of the earth and water is compeltely destroyed. Astroturf mauy not be aesthetically pleasing (and that’s just a matter of taste) but I am much happier to see it than the desecration of the ecosystem that is currently standard practice.
It’s really nice to see a green Kuwait, but not with Astroturf (or artificial grass). I prefer small stones (or pebbles and arrange for meditation) just like Japanese (ZEN) gardens. 🙂
Look everyone, (mark included)
Im taking a moment out of my busy day so say ; ‘Stop Whining’
Its just a patch of astro-turf … It looks nice + it saves water + may I remind you we live in a desert ..
No one is planting plastic trees its just covering patches of dust, like a rug .
Step down and chill the smeg out.
The voice of truth has spoken.
I think Mark you have mistaken it. It Grass only, these are the grass which comes in rolls and you just lay it on surface properly and do the watering. Hence you are seeing some small patches which the cut to cover the spherical areas…..This will last all of winter here in Kuwait…once June arrives you will see only the burned beige coloured grass…
i’m not mistaken it’s astroturf.