What if you reconsider how your landscape is maintained?

Care for your garden, your neighbors and your gardener by eliminating blowers

This attractive garden embraces leaves.
This attrac­tive gar­den embraces leaves, and is main­tained with­out send­ing noise and air­borne pol­lu­tion onto neigh­bors’ properties.

Blow­ers used for land­scape main­te­nance cause far more dam­age than ben­e­fit. The noise caus­es hear­ing loss to the oper­a­tors, stress and lost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for neigh­bors. The dust blown into the air con­tains PM10 and PM2.5 par­ti­cles which cause res­pi­ra­to­ry dam­age, and the par­ti­cles them­selves are often tox­ic sub­stances like rodent feces and lead. In gas-pow­ered mod­els, the two stroke engines release NOx and VOCs, which con­tribute to air pol­lu­tion and cli­mate change. Despite gar­den­ers’ claims to the con­trary, these machines are not nec­es­sary to main­tain a land­scape, and often make the land­scape less healthy.
Emssions of gas-powered garden equipment compared with passenger car

Cal­i­for­nia Assem­bly Bill No. 1346 was signed by Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som on Octo­ber 9, 2021. The bill aims to ban the sale of new gaso­line-pow­ered equip­ment under 25 gross horse­pow­er by 2024, known as small off-road engines (“SOREs”) (Willon, 2021). SOREs are pri­mar­i­ly used in gas-pow­ered lawn equip­ment, such as leaf blow­ers, lawn­mow­ers, chain­saws, and pres­sure wash­ers, but also extend to gen­er­a­tors and oth­er emer­gency response equipment.

SOREs have proved to be a dan­ger to the envi­ron­ment. In Cal­i­for­nia, SOREs con­tribute more total nitrous oxide (NOx) and reac­tive organ­ic gas­es (ROG) pol­lu­tion than pas­sen­ger cars do statewide (Id.). Oper­at­ing a gas leaf blow­er for one hour can pro­duce as many NOx+ROG emis­sions as dri­ving 1,100 miles in a new pas­sen­ger car.

(SORE Fact Sheet)


“Leaf blow­ers are too loud. This leaf blow­er machine is beyond a doubt the worst inven­tion ever cre­at­ed.” —Bal­ti­more Sun, Opin­ion (10/15/2017)

Gas Blower Emissions

Gas-pow­ered leaf blow­ers are a sig­nif­i­cant source of pol­lu­tants. An arti­cle pub­lished by Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis states, “Many con­sumer-grade blow­ers (and some mow­ers) use a two-stroke engine, which lacks an inde­pen­dent lubri­ca­tion sys­tem, so fuel has to be mixed with oil. Burn­ing oil and fuel emits a num­ber of harm­ful tox­ic pol­lu­tants into the air, includ­ing car­bon monox­ide, nitrous oxides (which cause smog for­ma­tion and acid rain), and hydro­car­bons (a car­cino­genic gas that also caus­es smog).”


Blow­ers cause hear­ing loss after only a short expo­sure. Source: CDC

“The num­ber of air pol­lu­tants emit­ted by gas-pow­ered leaf blow­ers and lawn­mow­ers exceed pol­lu­tant emis­sions of large auto­mo­biles, which are reg­u­lat­ed to reduce and cap­ture many air pol­lu­tants. A 2011 study showed that a leaf blow­er emits near­ly 300 times the amount of air pol­lu­tants as a pick­up truck,” writes the WU report.

Leaf blow­ers, lawn­mow­ers, and oth­er equip­ment with small gas-pow­ered engines emit stag­ger­ing lev­els of air pol­lu­tion. These noisy machines are ter­ri­bly dis­rup­tive to com­mu­ni­ties across Cal­i­for­nia, and the work­ers who breathe in exhaust from this equip­ment day in and day out face dis­pro­por­tion­ate health risks, includ­ing asth­ma, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and can­cer. To ensure an equi­table tran­si­tion to safer, clean­er equip­ment, we secured $30 mil­lion in the state bud­get to help small busi­ness­es pur­chase zero-emis­sion replacements.
—Cal­i­for­nia Assem­bly­man Marc Berman

James Fal­lows, writer for The Atlantic writes about how a per­sis­tent group of cit­i­zens banned gas blow­ers in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.
Get Off My Lawn