We've just lived through 50 years of an invention that transformed neighborhood life in much of America, the gas-powered leaf blower. That era is coming to an end.
I am rather tickled by this well-written post, a chance to hear Ol' Blue Eyes croon again, and reading the impassioned comments.
I have to admit that I never understood the use of lawn blowers. Where the heck are the leaves being blown to? Not to kingdom come, I bet. Just seems like it is trying to make other people deal with your own problem. How appropriately Reaganesque. Here in San Diego we have a lot of broadleaf evergreens (and palm trees!) so there isn't quite the need for blowing around leaves into other people's yards. It happens, but it is not quite the problem that other commenters are describing.
My job is to enforce a gas leaf blower ban in the city I work for here in CA. The information you've shared has been invaluable to me in learning more about the issue and being able to explain why it's necessary. We're having a summit in 2 weeks with other cities in our area to discuss "best practices" in getting people to switch to electric leaf blowers such as bans, enforcement, or incentives.
I have to confess that I can't stand electric leaf blowers either, with their headache inducing whining sound. So I rake my own leaves. The exercise may do me some good.
Thank you for the excellent update on gas leaf blowers. It is good to know that they are apparently not too long for this world.
My coop complex in Brooklyn-1,100 apartments—recently got rid of them. The low buzz/hum of the electric replacements is such a welcome change—practically music to my ears.
In somewhat of a related vein, I wish the city could do something about the motorized bikes on the sidewalks. Maybe one day…
Finally, I beg to differ about 70’s cars. I think there’s a monotonous sameness to car designs today. There was some real style back then.
Salt Lake has an incentive program for lawn care cos. to switch. Likely less quickly effective than a ban, but given the extreme red state legislature it is likely the best that could be achieved without provoking the legislature into prohibiting any action on this front. And while I'm generally not keen on subsidizing polluters, the negative externalities of blowers are so high that it probably is a reasonable policy trade.
Since 2016, we have shared the condo/HOA experience that many of the earlier comments cover comprehensively. The only thing I might add is that many of us are remote workers from before COVID sent so many others back to their home offices with a more pronounced addition of virtual meetings throughout the work week. The impact of the noise pollution from large gas-powered mowers and leafblowers was only made worse for us when the HOA board changed landscapers for purported economies but that was accompanied by equipment that increased the loudness by at least 10 decibels. Our complaints fell on deaf ears (*ugh*) which was doubly ironic because the HOA did post a notice asking people to avoid loud conversations when walking along paths behind the buildings precisely because it was disturbing people at work inside their homes. Go figure...
That said - and this might be a bit too much of a stretch - I am struck by the contrast because our collective ability to identify distractions and pollution from these sorts of processes and a relative complacency when it comes to cognitive overload and disruption produced by runaway media like "Xitter" and TikTok (and that does even begin to consider how these invasive forces can be manipulated maliciously whether for commercial or strategic purposes). Fwiw, I am in the middle of a "Month Without X (formerly Twitter)" and find the experience both pleasant and distressing at the same time - well, depending on whether I am focused on something with deliberate intent... and even then, it is incredibly difficult to avoid X when just perusing classical sources of information or when reading email from longstanding correspondents or established newsletters.
In fact, I am reminded of an argument made by a dear friend that we should not pick up our autumn leaves at all... that they should either be mulched in place with a mower or simply left as-is in those open spaces that are not dedicated to green grass. We might wish to replace X (formerly Twitter) with something better, but perhaps an alternative would be to just ignore it altogether. Is that even possible?
I live in a condo development in West Michigan with mostly older residents, with ranch-style, side-by-side units, most of which look over a pond or lake. My neighbors are fairly progressive: there are 3 hybrid automobiles in the neighborhood and right now an owner of a large Rivian electric pickup is visiting my next-door neighbor. I'm the bookkeeper, so I facilitate checks of a bit less than $2,000 per month for the company that maintains our lawns in the summer and plows our roads in the winter.
As in most cases, every piece of equipment the landscaping company uses - large lawnmowers, trimmers, leaf blowers - is gas powered. I'm quite certain the backpack-style leaf blowers are 2-stroke; I know they are outrageously noisy. Every Friday AM throughout the summer that penetrating, invasive sound can be heard throughout the development. I would be thrilled to see them change to electric blowers and trimmers (even electric mowers), but the probability of that happening is close to zero. My next-door neighbor is the liaison between the condo association and the lawn service. When I mentioned the noise and pollution from the gas-powered blowers, he told me to buy ear plugs.
I think that's the problem with these contraptions - like a lot of the noise pollution we're subject to every day, most people just don't take it all that seriously. It's a lot like cigarette smoke in the 1960's: it was just a part of life, and anyone griping about it was considered an oddball and laughed at. Fortunately, at some point people began to realize they were killing themselves and one another by not taking it seriously. I hope the same thing happens with leaf blowers and small, 2-stroke engines in general: people begin to take this stuff seriously and take steps to toss them onto the trash heap of history, where they belong.
I've had healthier habits than most people all my life due to family influence, both of eating and exercise. From my 20s to age 40 I averaged around 10 bicycle miles a day, which included numerous bicycle trips including x-country and climbing 12,000 foot passes in Colorado on separate trips. From age 40 on I've run just about every day. At around age 60, my carotid artery was pristine. (The woman who did the screening asked me why I'd bothered to have it checked.)
Leaf blowers invaded my suburban Boston neighborhood with a vengeance probably in the latter '00s. Within a few years, they were being used through the summer, to blow a few leaves off of lawns, to blow the dust off of driveways, and even off of the streets. I can only figure that the leaf blowing companies were making extra work for themselves. There was no respite. The damn things truly drove me crazy. In the most recent couple of years of the leaf blowers, I started taking joy rides whenever the damn things started up.
In '18 or '19 I started noticing that when I ran, I was starting to have to intersperse my runs with some walking and breath catching. Turned out I have a partially blocked coronary artery. At my age, my father--who had a bad to mediocre diet for most of his life (partly because of the state of knowledge as to what was bad for health during his lifetime--could beat good tennis players literally half his age. My older brother doesn't have such problems, and my paternal uncle, who had a terrible but fun diet, played squash into his mid-80s.
I rake my grass and leaves, and I use a probably 90-100 year old non-motorized push mower to mow my lawn--a thing of beauty that someone gave me, and that is almost certainly older than the first mower I ever used, at age 7, to mow our small lawn in Seattle.
I have been gobsmacked in dealing with leaves and grass during my adulthood. The plain lawn mower was my first ‘landscaping’ tool. I would cut the lawn, rake up the leaves/grass, and put them in a compost heap.
Then came lawn movers with a catcher for grass. Next came the conundrum—was it better to pick up the grass or leave it on the ground.
My next lawn wonder machine was a sit down mover with an attached leaf/grass catcher. I found this dangerous as, on more than one occasion, a low branch almost took off my head as a zipped around.
At no time did I consider using a gas-operated blower. It was noisy and often simply blowed the stuff around. The landscaping business blossomed. The cut and rake folks were superseded by the gas and blow folks.
The noise and environmental damage increased exponentially. Landscapers bought fancy trailers to transport their new toys. As I approached my dotage, I engaged such landscapers to deal with my lawn and leaves. ‘Stuff’ kept being blown onto my porch and there was no thought of composting the grass/leaves.
Wherever I went, I saw armies of landscapers blowing stuff around. There was no consideration of the environment, as this happy band of blowers, either with ear phones or ear buds, merrily blasted away.
I am unaware whether this was the best way to deal with grass and leaves. However, some environmentalists zeroed in on the damage this inflected on nature. Also, when the blowers commenced early in the morning, it was difficult to get the proscribed eight hours of sleep.
I am delighted that there is a burgeoning legislative initiative to reverse this ‘easy, noisy, and inefficient’ way of dealing with grass and leaves. Two-cycle gas engines are not environmentally sensitive.
Does anyone know today where one can buy an old-fashioned mover and rake? Or where a teenager can be found who will use his people power to care for lawns?
As Jim Fallows eloquently highlights, this is a Creep, Creep, Crap situation that has gotten totally out of hand. Bad for the environment, not good for the grass, but excellent employment for a bevy of Latino ‘horticulturalists.’ For me, I yearn for the ‘good old days.’
One bright spot: given the shortage of water in a number of states, there is legislation to curb or eliminate private private lawns.
I'm enjoying a lovely cool morning reading this outside my favorite Portland, OR coffee shop. And of course, as I'm finishing up and reading the footnotes, a man across the street is finally successful at starting his two-stroke blower, and it's time to flee. We can't be rid of these things soon enough
I am rather tickled by this well-written post, a chance to hear Ol' Blue Eyes croon again, and reading the impassioned comments.
I have to admit that I never understood the use of lawn blowers. Where the heck are the leaves being blown to? Not to kingdom come, I bet. Just seems like it is trying to make other people deal with your own problem. How appropriately Reaganesque. Here in San Diego we have a lot of broadleaf evergreens (and palm trees!) so there isn't quite the need for blowing around leaves into other people's yards. It happens, but it is not quite the problem that other commenters are describing.
My job is to enforce a gas leaf blower ban in the city I work for here in CA. The information you've shared has been invaluable to me in learning more about the issue and being able to explain why it's necessary. We're having a summit in 2 weeks with other cities in our area to discuss "best practices" in getting people to switch to electric leaf blowers such as bans, enforcement, or incentives.
It's a noble cause you're fighting for, Jim.
I have to confess that I can't stand electric leaf blowers either, with their headache inducing whining sound. So I rake my own leaves. The exercise may do me some good.
Thank you for the excellent update on gas leaf blowers. It is good to know that they are apparently not too long for this world.
My coop complex in Brooklyn-1,100 apartments—recently got rid of them. The low buzz/hum of the electric replacements is such a welcome change—practically music to my ears.
In somewhat of a related vein, I wish the city could do something about the motorized bikes on the sidewalks. Maybe one day…
Finally, I beg to differ about 70’s cars. I think there’s a monotonous sameness to car designs today. There was some real style back then.
Salt Lake has an incentive program for lawn care cos. to switch. Likely less quickly effective than a ban, but given the extreme red state legislature it is likely the best that could be achieved without provoking the legislature into prohibiting any action on this front. And while I'm generally not keen on subsidizing polluters, the negative externalities of blowers are so high that it probably is a reasonable policy trade.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50623444/utah-program-targets-commercial-lawn-care-emissions-offers-discounts-for-electric-gear
Since 2016, we have shared the condo/HOA experience that many of the earlier comments cover comprehensively. The only thing I might add is that many of us are remote workers from before COVID sent so many others back to their home offices with a more pronounced addition of virtual meetings throughout the work week. The impact of the noise pollution from large gas-powered mowers and leafblowers was only made worse for us when the HOA board changed landscapers for purported economies but that was accompanied by equipment that increased the loudness by at least 10 decibels. Our complaints fell on deaf ears (*ugh*) which was doubly ironic because the HOA did post a notice asking people to avoid loud conversations when walking along paths behind the buildings precisely because it was disturbing people at work inside their homes. Go figure...
That said - and this might be a bit too much of a stretch - I am struck by the contrast because our collective ability to identify distractions and pollution from these sorts of processes and a relative complacency when it comes to cognitive overload and disruption produced by runaway media like "Xitter" and TikTok (and that does even begin to consider how these invasive forces can be manipulated maliciously whether for commercial or strategic purposes). Fwiw, I am in the middle of a "Month Without X (formerly Twitter)" and find the experience both pleasant and distressing at the same time - well, depending on whether I am focused on something with deliberate intent... and even then, it is incredibly difficult to avoid X when just perusing classical sources of information or when reading email from longstanding correspondents or established newsletters.
In fact, I am reminded of an argument made by a dear friend that we should not pick up our autumn leaves at all... that they should either be mulched in place with a mower or simply left as-is in those open spaces that are not dedicated to green grass. We might wish to replace X (formerly Twitter) with something better, but perhaps an alternative would be to just ignore it altogether. Is that even possible?
I live in a condo development in West Michigan with mostly older residents, with ranch-style, side-by-side units, most of which look over a pond or lake. My neighbors are fairly progressive: there are 3 hybrid automobiles in the neighborhood and right now an owner of a large Rivian electric pickup is visiting my next-door neighbor. I'm the bookkeeper, so I facilitate checks of a bit less than $2,000 per month for the company that maintains our lawns in the summer and plows our roads in the winter.
As in most cases, every piece of equipment the landscaping company uses - large lawnmowers, trimmers, leaf blowers - is gas powered. I'm quite certain the backpack-style leaf blowers are 2-stroke; I know they are outrageously noisy. Every Friday AM throughout the summer that penetrating, invasive sound can be heard throughout the development. I would be thrilled to see them change to electric blowers and trimmers (even electric mowers), but the probability of that happening is close to zero. My next-door neighbor is the liaison between the condo association and the lawn service. When I mentioned the noise and pollution from the gas-powered blowers, he told me to buy ear plugs.
I think that's the problem with these contraptions - like a lot of the noise pollution we're subject to every day, most people just don't take it all that seriously. It's a lot like cigarette smoke in the 1960's: it was just a part of life, and anyone griping about it was considered an oddball and laughed at. Fortunately, at some point people began to realize they were killing themselves and one another by not taking it seriously. I hope the same thing happens with leaf blowers and small, 2-stroke engines in general: people begin to take this stuff seriously and take steps to toss them onto the trash heap of history, where they belong.
Jim, you didn't emphasize enough the public health impact of leaf blowers. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/09/health/noise-exposure-health-impacts.html
I've had healthier habits than most people all my life due to family influence, both of eating and exercise. From my 20s to age 40 I averaged around 10 bicycle miles a day, which included numerous bicycle trips including x-country and climbing 12,000 foot passes in Colorado on separate trips. From age 40 on I've run just about every day. At around age 60, my carotid artery was pristine. (The woman who did the screening asked me why I'd bothered to have it checked.)
Leaf blowers invaded my suburban Boston neighborhood with a vengeance probably in the latter '00s. Within a few years, they were being used through the summer, to blow a few leaves off of lawns, to blow the dust off of driveways, and even off of the streets. I can only figure that the leaf blowing companies were making extra work for themselves. There was no respite. The damn things truly drove me crazy. In the most recent couple of years of the leaf blowers, I started taking joy rides whenever the damn things started up.
In '18 or '19 I started noticing that when I ran, I was starting to have to intersperse my runs with some walking and breath catching. Turned out I have a partially blocked coronary artery. At my age, my father--who had a bad to mediocre diet for most of his life (partly because of the state of knowledge as to what was bad for health during his lifetime--could beat good tennis players literally half his age. My older brother doesn't have such problems, and my paternal uncle, who had a terrible but fun diet, played squash into his mid-80s.
I rake my grass and leaves, and I use a probably 90-100 year old non-motorized push mower to mow my lawn--a thing of beauty that someone gave me, and that is almost certainly older than the first mower I ever used, at age 7, to mow our small lawn in Seattle.
And what of the fireflies and battery powered leaf blowers. Is the wind blown environmental damage any better with battery powered leaf blowers?
I have been gobsmacked in dealing with leaves and grass during my adulthood. The plain lawn mower was my first ‘landscaping’ tool. I would cut the lawn, rake up the leaves/grass, and put them in a compost heap.
Then came lawn movers with a catcher for grass. Next came the conundrum—was it better to pick up the grass or leave it on the ground.
My next lawn wonder machine was a sit down mover with an attached leaf/grass catcher. I found this dangerous as, on more than one occasion, a low branch almost took off my head as a zipped around.
At no time did I consider using a gas-operated blower. It was noisy and often simply blowed the stuff around. The landscaping business blossomed. The cut and rake folks were superseded by the gas and blow folks.
The noise and environmental damage increased exponentially. Landscapers bought fancy trailers to transport their new toys. As I approached my dotage, I engaged such landscapers to deal with my lawn and leaves. ‘Stuff’ kept being blown onto my porch and there was no thought of composting the grass/leaves.
Wherever I went, I saw armies of landscapers blowing stuff around. There was no consideration of the environment, as this happy band of blowers, either with ear phones or ear buds, merrily blasted away.
I am unaware whether this was the best way to deal with grass and leaves. However, some environmentalists zeroed in on the damage this inflected on nature. Also, when the blowers commenced early in the morning, it was difficult to get the proscribed eight hours of sleep.
I am delighted that there is a burgeoning legislative initiative to reverse this ‘easy, noisy, and inefficient’ way of dealing with grass and leaves. Two-cycle gas engines are not environmentally sensitive.
Does anyone know today where one can buy an old-fashioned mover and rake? Or where a teenager can be found who will use his people power to care for lawns?
As Jim Fallows eloquently highlights, this is a Creep, Creep, Crap situation that has gotten totally out of hand. Bad for the environment, not good for the grass, but excellent employment for a bevy of Latino ‘horticulturalists.’ For me, I yearn for the ‘good old days.’
One bright spot: given the shortage of water in a number of states, there is legislation to curb or eliminate private private lawns.
I'm enjoying a lovely cool morning reading this outside my favorite Portland, OR coffee shop. And of course, as I'm finishing up and reading the footnotes, a man across the street is finally successful at starting his two-stroke blower, and it's time to flee. We can't be rid of these things soon enough