Winner
Sydny Horge, from Washington, D.C., chose an Opinion video called “How to Fall Out of Love With Your Lawn” and wrote:
If you ask my dad, he’ll tell you there are many things I dislike. But there are few things I hate more than edging useless grass. Once a week, every week for three quarters of the year I spend 30 minutes to an hour hunched over at an excruciating angle to make our lawn a geometric shape. Halfway into a normal job, my eyes sting with sweat while mosquitoes mercilessly attack any exposed flesh. The recent heat waves made the temperature feel like triple digits, but I still had to be out there, edging my life away.
Watching this video showed me that not only are we wasting time and money, but also our most precious resource: water. I think about California and the West’s aridification problem and other global water crises and struggle with how indirectly-affected people can see that and then continue to regularly drench their turf.
I do have some idea, though, of the status symbol aspect of a flat, green expanse. My dad grew up deep in the projects of New York City, where trees were a rare sight, let alone lawns. For decades both government-funded programs and private companies discriminated against Black people and severely limited our available suburban housing and home equity. My family’s modest, well-maintained (however difficultly) yard reminds him of how far he’s come as a homeowner, and of the better childhood he’s given me.
This might finally show him that success doesn’t have to cost the environment.