Are things Black & White, or Shades Of Green?

As I said in a previous post I was admiring how green the grass on the artificial side is. But according to a book that I picked up today - Shades of green by Paul Waddington, in his chapter on grass, he says about artificial grass:

...it will need replacing after as little as fifteen years; it's made from fossil-fuel-derived products and it performs none of the CO2 absorption, water purification, pollution absorption or wildlife habitat services that a real lawn will provide. Won't smell nice, either. So artificial grass's status as a big sheet of dead stuff in the middle of your garden condemns it to the least green spot.

His assessment of the 'greenness' of grass was that a Wildflower meadow would be regarded as Deep Green, while a home grown, infrequently mown, unwatered lawn would be Dark Green.
If you're striving for a perfect lawn, you would be considered pale green.

The book had an interesting perspective - looking at the topic of how green various things are; from cars to bananas to the internet.
It was written in a light humorous way, but I wasn't sure how factual all his assessments were. I also thought having a chapter explaining which drugs were and were not green friendly was a little irresponsible.

There were a couple of surprises though. Apparently, green-blogging is an oxymoron? The use of the internet left a quite large carbon footprint, especially compared to TV or newspapers.

It did leave me thinking that awareness and balance, are most important. I may never be a 'dark greeny', but then maybe that's not so bad?