The Polish city of Katowice has employed 35 sheep to “cut” the grass as part of a trial seeking to make the process cheaper, quieter and more environmentally friendly than traditional lawn-mowing.
The animals, who began work on 3 October, are tasked with keeping grass under control in an area of approximately 1,000 square metres (10,764 square feet) in the Brynów district of Katowice, a large city in southern Poland.
The sheep do not have a deadline for completing the work and are “paid” in food – i.e. the grass they are munching.
My tu gadu-gadu, a Zakład Zieleni Miejskiej w #Katowice właśnie zatrudnił do pracy owce ☺ Ten nietypowy pomysł to efekt współpracy miasta z jednym ze śląskich hodowców. W ramach okresu próbnego będą „kosić" teren w Katowicach-Brynowie 💚 pic.twitter.com/mQhSjUzsXS
— Miasto Katowice (@miasto_katowice) October 4, 2023
The Katowice municipal greenery department employed the animals after being approached by a breeder who had already provided similar services in other cities, reports news service Portal Samorządowy.
A similar solution has already been tested in the nearby city of Gliwice. There, the local waste management company employed several dozen Cameroon sheep in 2021 to work at a reclaimed landfill site.
“The idea seemed crazy to me at first – what do you mean sheep instead of lawnmowers?” said Mieczysław Wołosz from the greenery department. “But as I started to look into it and read that similar solutions were already in operation somewhere, I thought – why not? It’s worth a try.”
“Air pollution is a serious problem, plus lawnmowers are noisy. That is why we decided to test this ecological way,” he added. “After the experiment is over, we will summarise it, recalculate and consider whether it is worth at least partially introducing this type of ‘mowing’ on a permanent basis.”
The coal-mining Silesian region of which Katowice is the capital has the worst air pollution in Poland, which in turn has some of Europe’s most polluted air, resulting in tens of thousands of premature deaths annually.
Poland's annual air pollution ranking has been published by @alarm_smogowy, which notes that "the air was unbreathable for 2-3 months of the year" in places on the list.
As before, the worst spots were smaller towns and villages, rather that large cities https://t.co/6nN1owLwWu
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 9, 2022
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Main image credit: Miasto Katowice/X
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
