Bans on Leaf-Blowers

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now our climate story of the week. It's about the growing movement to ban gas-powered leaf blowers. California has done it. Some localities in this area have too. The debate is coming to a front lawn near you to be sure. Climate protection isn't the only reason. Studies have shown that gas-powered leaf blowers not only impact the environment at the atmospheric level, they also have adverse health consequences for people here on the ground.

New Jersey South Orange Board of Trustees just banned the use of gas leaf blowers starting Sunday until September, with restrictions set on when any leaf blower can be used year-round. In New York State Senator Peter Harkin presented a bill to promote zero-emission landscape devices by the year 2027. More states are joining the queue to consider the banning of gas leaf blowers. California Governor Gavin Newsom was the first when he signed a bill to end the sale of gas-powered equipment, mowers and leaf blowers alike in that state. He signed that last fall.

Here to speak with us today about her recent New York Times op-ed called For The Climate Make The Switch To Electric Leaf Blowers is Jessica Stolzberg a freelance writer and editor from Montclair. Jessica, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Jessica Stolzberg: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Our suburban listeners are probably well acquainted. Yes, I know there's some private houses lawns in the city, too. Those folks probably well acquainted with one big problem with gas-powered leaf blowers. They are so darn noisy. Do they have an impact on the climate as well as our ears?

Jessica Stolzberg: They do. The gas leaf blower is made possible by a two-stroke engine. That makes them lightweight and very efficient, which is how they end up on backpacks on the operators so that they can do lawns. They're also used in urban communities. I know that they're used by building supers for their back areas and alleyways. Sometimes it is relegated largely to a suburban problem. Washington DC is certainly a healthy mix of some more urban-suburban settings, and their ban just went into effect in January. It's been rolling out pretty smoothly.

But because of the very combined oil and gas and they're very inefficient so they end up only using up about 70% of the power they need and the other 30% is spewed out into the atmosphere and into the worker's lungs, and other people's and is a contributing factor to greenhouse gas which as we know is a major factor in global warming.

Brian Lehrer: How much so? How do you start to measure the impact in terms of greenhouse gases? People may think, "Oh, these little two-stroke, leaf blowers." How much could they be contributing compared to all the cars and trucks on the road and everything like that?

Jessica Stolzberg: Well, one of the reasons that Governor Newsom has created the ban in California, which will only be a ban for the sale of the gas leaf blower, and unfortunately, when I read a lot about the reaction there, the landscaping community said, "Well, I'm going to keep using what I already own. I'm going to cross state lines to get the equipment I want, so I can continue to use it." You're also still facing other hurdles, even though it's a really important step. I hope that other states across the country will start thinking more carefully about doing the same.

I think one of the most startling statistics that is presented over and over because I think it's something that we can all digest really easily is that a study has shown that one hour of use of a gas leaf blower like that landscaper might be using on someone's property is the equivalent of driving 1,100 miles in a 2017 Toyota Camry.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. 1,100 miles.

Jessica Stolzberg: 1,100 miles. There's another one that's for, I think, a Ford pickup and the equivalent is 3,900 miles for that one. I think another example is that in 2018, there was a study that showed that Americans consumed close to 3 billion gallons of gas on lawn and garden equipment and that's the equivalent of 6 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year. These numbers are enormous and I think sometimes someone thinks, "Oh, 20 minutes on my yard. It's okay. It doesn't matter," but it's a particularly egregious use of fossil fuel when you see how--

Even the mowers, the 1,100 mile comparison for the gas leaf blower is 300 for a mower. The mowers, it'd be great for those to go electric as well. It's really the gas blower it's a particularly egregious tool. That's not even incorporating the disruption to wildlife and ecosystems and the neighbors and health et cetera.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another eye-popping stat that I came up with when I was reading around on this yesterday. This goes back to 2011 in the automotive site admins, and it says, "The consumer-grade leaf blower emits more pollutants than a 6,200 pound 2011 Ford F 150 SVT raptor," according to tests conducted by Edmunds inside line.com, which calls itself the premier online resource for automotive enthusiasts.

Here's a car-oriented side and automotive enthusiasts site in sideline.com, from Edmunds and it finds that a leaf blower emits more pollutants than one of the biggest pickup trucks on the market, the Ford Raptor.

Jessica Stolzberg: Right. It's startling. I think hopefully, the more people understand how imbalanced and inefficient use of gasoline they are for the purpose that they serve, it will hopefully inspire both from the municipal level and also just individual homeowners to start rethinking their use of the tool.

[crosstalk]

Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: No, no, finish your thought, I'm sorry.

Jessica Stolzberg: Oh, I was going to say that I think one of the points that I had hoped to make in the piece was that I think sometimes there's an enormous landscape-- to get landscaping industry for private residences is an enormous industry. I think that sometimes the homeowners who are having their properties cared for by others are not thinking carefully about the tools that show up to their property to be used. They've separated themselves to the point where even when they hear sometimes these startling statistics, they might think, but I don't have a gas leaf blower, and yet, it's they're actually allowing the use of it.

I'm hoping that we can move into a space where individual homeowners and apartment building owners and even this extends to municipalities like the parks departments, school grounds, et cetera. It's not just people with yards, it really is everywhere that we can start rethinking what am I okay with using where I live? What role might I play in making a decision to change what I allow to happen on my own land? I think there's a lot to talk about in that area.

Brian Lehrer: Our guest in our climate segment of the week is Jessica Stolzberg maybe you saw her op-ed this month in the New York Times called Here's A Better Way To Care For Your Yard, Your Neighbors, And The Planet. Well, thank you. Jessica, I was just about to put out the phone number for our callers and say, "Okay, homeowners, landscapers, school districts, since you mentioned that anyone else concerned with this call then at 212-433 WNYC." Guess what, this is one of those segments where all our lines filled up before I even gave out the number and we're getting them from all over the region.

Nancy in Maplewood in New Jersey, I see you. Susan in Long Beach on Long Island, I see you. We have a caller from Hastings in Westchester. We have a caller from Cos Cob in Connecticut. People have a lot to say about this in lawn world, at least all over the metropolitan area. Let's start with Nancy in Maplewood. Nancy, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Nancy: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I'm an elected official in Maplewood, New Jersey. I'm the governing body here in town and for the last six years, we've been working on this issue. We did a seasonal ban as a pilot in 2016. Then we passed an ordinance for an annual ban on the use of gas-powered leaf blowers in the township from May 1st through September 30th every year. Just last month, we passed an ordinance to ban them year-round beginning January 1st, 2023.

The main reason for that, the big reason is health. Whether it's health of the workers who are breathing in gas and oil that's 30% of what's being burned is released unburned, I should say, and they're breathing that in cancer causing effects. The hearing is obvious. The health of the workers, the health of the residents, the health of the environment, the health of the air we breathe, the health of the insects and birds and animals and everything, and actually just health overall.

If you think of it that way and you realize how awful these machines are, when I first started doing this, it was all about the noise and then all of a sudden I had to learn way more and once you go down that rabbit hole, it's pretty frightening. I've kind of become the go-to elected official who got it done in the tri-state area. I've consulted everywhere from Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

In fact, I have a call at one o'clock today with somebody from another town trying to figure out how to make this work because our township was also sued by the New Jersey landscaper Association. We prevailed in that lawsuit, so that has gone away. Elected officials everywhere, I urge you to take control of this issue in your community.

Brian Lehrer: I'm so glad you called, Nancy, and tell us what the reason for the pushback is from the landscapers association. Are the gas powered leaf blowers cheaper to own and use than the electrical alternatives, which we'll talk more about electric leaf blowers as we go, or what's the reason for the pushback?

Nancy: The reason generally is, and there was a lot of false threats or scare tactics of the prices will go up. It'll take us longer to do the properties. The reason is they have a formula. They go in, they do the exact same thing to every property on a weekly basis, whether it needs it or not, they mow, trim and blow and that's the formula they use and it's profitable. They go in, they go out, but the seasonal bans came about because there's nothing to blow in the summer.

The grass barely grows in summer when it's dry, so the main reason is it interrupts their business model, which has become profitable and so people are starting to see that. COVID actually, this is one of those ironic things that COVID actually helped for residents to understand, people who thought this was the stupidest thing to be focusing on because they got on the train every morning went into New York, came back and everybody was quiet again.

Then they were working from home and they realized that, yes, this is a problem and it impacts us in so many ways, but quality of life being number one amongst them. The landscapers they know this is coming down the pike all over the country and in Canada, as a matter of fact, and the smart ones are transitioning. The smarter ones are promoting themselves as green landscaping companies and quiet and good for your property. I think it'll be a transition that they have no choice but to do.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, thank you so much for your call. I really, really appreciate it. Jessica, do you want to pile on, on this? Do you want to add anything about if you are needing to write this op-ed, here's a better way care for your yard and people like Nancy at the level of local government in so many places are trying to push through these ordinances, but they're just beginning. What's the resistance, how much opposition is there?

Jessica Stolzberg: The opposition tends to come, as Nancy said, from the landscapers themselves, which has to do with, at the end of the day, it has to do with that they feel that the gas leaf blowers are more efficient, which equals dollars for them. I agree with her that this is turning slowly towards a transition to alternative power, which is something we talk about in other areas as well all the time now. You had Bill McKibben on talking about heat pumps, people are talking about more and more people, the electric car industry is booming.

What's interesting is that the gas leaf blower remains unregulated, whereas they burn dirtier than car, like a car that that does what a gas leaf blower does, couldn't pass an emissions test. That in itself is the problem, but as Nancy mentioned it, this was something that took them six years to move along.

I think the space that I wrote that piece in was to say, while we wait for this slow moving, but vitally important change from on high, meaning our elected officials working on it and local government and state government and perhaps one day federal government. At the same time I think that right now in the face of the climate crisis, individuals often feel somewhat paralyzed by the scope of what we face, because we hear, we have to have legislative change at enormous levels and change with big oil. Yet sometimes those very same people are allowing a gas leaf blower on their property and it may feel like, "Oh, it's only 20 minutes," but given how severe the impact is in many different ways.

If the homeowners themselves started turning to the land landscapers and saying, "I need to rethink what I'm doing on my property and this is how I'm going to divest from fossil fuels." Right now fossil fuels are very much something that we're all talking about right now and all the time. The recent report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change talked about the two takeaways or that we have to adapt to what's already happened on this planet. We also have to continue to reduce our use of fossil fuels.

You use the gas leaf blower, and it actually can manage these two directives at the exact same time. I think what I propose is that for the person who is affected by the information, whether from this segment or something they read or their own research that they might rethink, how do I care for my land and can I do it successfully without the use of fossil fuels and with which means without the use of the gas leaf blower. Then in turn, you're protecting the health of the workers, you're protecting your own neighborhood, your community, and then the planet at large.

One thing that I did want to address that came up in a lot of the comments in reaction to my piece was that my focus was on those who are employing landscapers, that this is a conversation worth having about switching to alternative power because the electric leaf blowers have really come up in terms of their affordability and effectiveness and a lot of people said, Well, what about the blowers themselves are not ideal, even if they're electric," and I do agree with that and that's absolutely correct.

They are still very disruptive to the environment and to very fragile ecosystems that live down on the ground, insects and small creatures who are disrupted by the blowers. I don't know if we can suggest to families that are employing a landscaper that they go the step of asking for landscapers to return to the rake. That would be the ideal, but I'm not sure we as a society are in a position right now to get back to our ideals. We're not doing a great job of that and I think it would be amazing if someone said, "Not only am I not going to use a gas leaf blower, I'm actually going to find a landscaper who can use rakes the way they did for a very long time before these machines came into existence."

Brian Lehrer: Well, somewhere between,-

[crosstalk]

Go ahead. You would propose.

Jessica Stolzberg: I was going to say, I would propose making more money for high school students or their sports teams by doing the great fall rakathon in addition to car washes. Get the high school students onto your property with their rakes and that's another option. There are a lot of ways that we could actually change the way we take care of our own property in a way that the leaf blowers aren't actually as needed, or they're not needed as often.

Brian Lehrer: Powered by anything. Somewhere between the gas powered leaf blower and the rake is the electric leaf blower. Matt in Shokan, New York up in Ulster County is calling about his. Hi Matt, you're on WNYC.

Matt: Hi, thanks so much for taking my call. I'm so excited that you're covering this. I'm a pandemic transplant first time homeowner, and I bought all electric lawn equipment. I'm on four acres with forest. I have electric chainsaw, electric blower, electric mower, and it's beautiful. You have to buy a couple extra batteries, but I managed this property on my own, all electric and at 40 years old, I had never until last year smelled fresh cut grass. I smelled fumes and it's extraordinary. It's beautiful.

Brian Lehrer: That is great. Electric lawn mower as well, you are saying, right?

Matt: Yes. Everything and it's easy to use. It's lightweight. They cost the same or less as electrical equipment. Every time I go out on my lawn, I'm mowing it, I can't imagine why anyone else would do anything else. It's so easy. It's simple. It's just so obvious. I had no idea what the statistics are. I knew that it was greener and it just seemed like an obvious answer. I don't regret it one bit. It's absolutely extraordinary. It's an incredible thing.

Brian Lehrer: Matt, thank you very much for your testimonial to electric lawn equipment. Why are we only talking about leaf blowers, Jessica? Why is this movement only about leaf blowers and not so much about lawnmowers either? Aren't they gasoline-powered too in many cases?

Jessica Stolzberg: They are. I think they can, sometimes, especially the commercial mowers, can be more cost-prohibitive for the landscapers to transition to. In DC, I think they've worked within the municipality to help landscapers transition to this equipment because that's certainly-- I hope you can hear from some landscapers about what some of their hurdles may be. I can certainly offer suggestions that I've thought of and were briefly mentioned in the piece and things I've spoken to friends about that how we ourselves, as homeowners, can help the landscapers transition by basically providing them with the tools at this juncture because they're not that expensive and it's a one time purchase.

It might also be that you would provide them with-- you find out which electric-- Many of them do have electric equipment by the way because they, especially in the towns where there are ordinances where they can only use them seasonally. You might even find out from your landscaper, "I'm going to say no to gas blowers from now on. Do you use electric and which brand is it and can I provide you with some extra battery packs that I keep charged at my home so you get to use them when you're here?"

What they made a bonafide issue is that they may not be able to keep those batteries charged throughout their workday. That's all part of us transitioning just the way we're seeing electric car chargers showing up in public spaces as the electric car industry is increasing

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're almost at a time on our climate story of the week for this week with Jessica Stalzberg, who wrote a New York Times essay called Here's a Better Way to Care for Your Yard, Your Neighbors, and the Planet Will Thank You. It's about doing away with gas-powered leaf blowers, which is a movement now across the US. Some localities, as you've been hearing, starting to ban them in our area. California became the first state a few months ago at the state level for carbon emissions and other reasons. Are the electric leaf blowers much quieter than those awful noisy gas ones?

Jessica Stolzberg: Enormously so. The decibel output of the gas leaf blowers is dangerous. It's dangerous when you're walking by one of them because your ears aren't protected. Sometimes the workers, you'll often see them with ear coverings, thank goodness but given they're just inches away from them-- Our voice conversation I think is about 60 decibels and the gas leaf blower emits up to about 110. It's like an earthquake where the small increment is actually enormous.

Every 10 decibels is getting larger and larger. It's also a low-frequency noise which is why it can penetrate through your house even when it's next door. You can't really escape the noise because it enters through concrete, windows, et cetera. Switching to electric, it is not a perfect solution ecologically but it is certainly vastly improved than continuing on with gas leaf blowers because just as an example, mopeds have a two stroke gas engine and basically, they've been phased out.

The idea that you would allow your neighbors to leave a moped running in their driveway for 20 minutes once a week, at some point, you might start to think, "Wait, what's going on over there?" I think we've normalized this very intense, industrialized sound that's also dangerous on many levels. I think we could step up the movement to eradicate these machines and we can do it ourselves.

Brian Lehrer: We did a segment last year. A call in for people who, during the pandemic, had moved from the city to the suburbs. How's that going for you? The biggest surprise on the negative side that we got from our newly suburban callers or newly ex-urban callers was it's so damn noisy here. We thought moving to the suburbs was going to be quieter but it's because of the mowers and the leaf blowers. Let's just take one more call. We're almost out of time but we'll get Anne in Irvington in here. Irvington, New York or Irvington, New Jersey, Anne, hi?

Anne: Hi. Irvington, New York.

Brian Lehrer: Hello. Irvington on Hudson. Go ahead.

Anne: We moved from the city to Irvington because we saw they had a lot of trees and we were psyched about that until we got here and realized that everybody hates weeds. We're in this like, sea of manicured yards and we weren't really sure what to do. People told us, "Hire a landscaping service." We did and it was like Armageddon. It was horrible, noisy, and gross.

I said, "I don't think this is what we're supposed to do." Until I started researching what we were actually doing and how devastating it was to the environment and these guys out there with these gross things on their backs. We eliminated most of the lawn. That was probably the best trick of all.

Brian Lehrer: What did you put in place of a lawn?

Anne: Plants. Native plants that don't need a lot of upkeep. You need a little bit of knowledge and you're out there in the garden but I would like to credit moving here with enlightening me on all of this beauty and stuff that's in the yard. I didn't know anything about plants until we got here.

Brian Lehrer: How do your neighbors feel about you converting the lawn into more of a plants area?

Anne: I think that they didn't like it at first because they thought that we had all these disgusting weeds in our yard and why would you do that? Until more and more people are starting to realize that healthy yards aren't really manicured like that. Birds and butterflies and insects are critical to human survival and hopefully that takes off and the more of us that have healthy yards and more of us will.

Brian Lehrer: There it is. You will like that. We just got a tweet from a listener named Daniel who writes in response to our conversation about electric blowers. "Better yet, there's no need to take the leaves away. #leavetheleaves. Mulch them in place with a mulching mower. That's going to be the last word on this segment. Thank you very much for your call. That's our climate story of the week for this week.

We thank Jessica Stolzberg for helping to inspire this conversation with her New York Times guest essay, Here's a Better Way to Care for Your Yard, Your Neighbors, and the Planet Will

Thank You. We thank you Jessica. Thanks so much.

Jessica Stolzberg: Thanks so much for having me.

 

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