The World's Ugliest Lawn 2024
A global initiative to save water by changing the norm of green lawns
Our mind-bogglingly successful global ugly lawn contest is back for the second year!
The World’s Ugliest Lawn contest celebrates lawn owners who conserve water during drought by not watering their lawns.
This year’s contest is now open for entries. Send an image of your ugly dry lawn to uglylawn@gotland.se together with a comment.
The ugly lawns at the top of this page are some of the first entries for this year’s contest. Sent all the way from New Zealand 🇳🇿 where they had drought and irrigation bans this winter.
Entries are accepted until December 25th 2024. The jury convenes in late December, and the winner is announced in January 2025.
The first prize is a preowned t-shirt with the text ”Proud owner of The World’s Ugliest Lawn”, which is passed on by the previous year’s winner of the competition. And as if that’s not enough, the winner also gets a diploma.
Kathleen Murray, Winner 2023
ABOUT LAST YEAR’S CONTEST
We launched last year’s contest together with actress and environmentalist Shailene Woodley. It was won by Kathleen Murray in Tasmania. Leading international editorial offices reported on the initiative. Resulting in an earned reach of 1.1 billion impressions without any media spend.
Type ”world’s ugliest” on Google and the name of our contest is now the 9th suggestion for the third word.
”This challenge is a great way to influence people to use less water”
Shailene Woodley
WHY DOES GOTLAND CHALLENGE THE WORLD TO SHARE IMAGES OF UGLY DRY LAWNS?
Huge amounts of water are used to water lawns for aesthetics. As the world gets warmer, water scarcity is a growing problem. UNESCO is projecting water scarcity in urban areas to double from 930 million in 2016 to 1.7–2.4 billion people in 2050. By not watering lawns for aesthetic reasons, we can protect the availability of groundwater.
This is why Gotland in Sweden is launching The World’s Ugliest Lawn-competition, with the aim of saving water on a global scale by changing the norm for green lawns.
Gotland, Sweden’s biggest island, regularly experiences drought and water scarcity. Saving water is a constant priority.
The origin of the initiative is the local contest ”Gotland’s Ugliest Lawn” which is held annually on our island since 2022.
Together with other water-saving initiatives the contest has helped reduce the yearly domestic water consumption on the island with 6.4% since 2021. The water use per household on Gotland was in 2023 at an all-time low (source: Gotland waterworks).
The World’s Ugliest Lawn-challenge is our way to inspire positive change globally and show that sustainability doesn’t have to be boring!
Contact:
Mimmi Gibson
Director of Brand, Region Gotland, Sweden
mimmi.gibson@gotland.se
+46 70 083 22 99
