Petrol-powered leaf blowers guzzle petrol and contribute to pollution

Like many during the first lockdown, the one thing I loved was the peace and quiet. There was no one sitting in their car outside my house, tapping at their phone or eating their sandwiches with the engine on. The city’s park team packed up their lawnmowers for a few weeks, and refuse workers collected rubbish less often. Even the low-level hum from the high street disappeared over night.

I wasn’t alone in relishing the peace. Along with the sadness played out on the news and social media, another story unfolded – one of joy – as many marvelled at being able to hear birds.

While coinciding with nesting season and therefore the time when birds sing their loudest, it was clear that Lockdown One had lifted the blanket of noise that muffled the most beautiful birdsong. We relished the sound of nature and a quieter pace of life.

Lockdown One also served to reduce pollution, if only temporarily. A Defra report suggests there was an average 20-30 per cent reduction in nitrous oxide in urban areas across the country to April 30, with a greater reduction – up to 40 per cent – on main roads. We breathed cleaner air, and those who bothered to look marvelled at the clearer night skies, thanks to a lack of plane contrails fogging the view.

Now, despite the second English lockdown, the noise has returned and, because it’s autumn, we have the additional deafening awfulness of leaf blowers to contend with. I wrote last year about the German government suggesting leaf blowers should be avoided because they “contribute to insect Armageddon”. Whether this is true or not, I was in full support due to hating them very much. This year leaf blowers are in the news again.

A recent report suggests that petrol-powered tools, including leaf blowers, consume gallons of petrol and emit shocking levels of polluting particulates.

The report (admittedly published by Ego, a company that makes lithium batteries), follows a combination of surveys, emissions tests and Freedom of Information requests that looked at the extent at which power tools are used, and how polluting they are. It found that just under 90 per cent of tools used by UK councils are powered by petrol engines, using a total of more than 600,000 litres of fuel each year.

When subjected to emissions tests, petrol-powered tools were found to use huge amounts of petrol compared with road vehicles – some even exceeded permitted levels of particulates.

Specifically, tests showed that in just one second, the most widely used leaf blower recorded more particulates than the legal limit for road vehicles in a kilometre. It seems petrol-powered tools aren’t subject to the same standards and testing as cars and other vehicles – so those of us who use them aren’t just polluting our local environment, we’re doing so above legal limits.

I don’t use leaf blowers, I like leaves where they fall. But I do have a strimmer, lawnmower and hedge trimmer. All are powered by batteries. They may not be able to blast air out of a tube at 200 miles per hour, but they do the job with a fraction of the noise of petrol-powered machines, and with far less pollution.

If 2020 has taught us anything, I hope it’s to make the most of a slower pace of life and enjoy peace and quiet. Which I also hope means death to petrol-powered leaf blowers.