🍃What If ‘Clean’ Yards Are Hurting the Earth?The Truth About Leaf Blowers and the Life Beneath Our Feet🍃

Gas Leaf Blowers Emit Massive Amounts of Carbon Pollution.

In 2020, fossil fuel-powered lawn equipment emitted more than 30 million tons of carbon dioxide - the leading driver of climate change. 

To put that in context, that’s as much carbon pollution as comes out of the tailpipes of 6.6 million cars over the course of a year. It’s also more pollution in one year than the entire city of Los Angeles in 2021.

A 2011 study by Edmunds found that a two-stroke gasoline-powered leaf blower can spew more pollution than a 6,200-pound Ford F-150 SVT Raptor pickup truck.

“Hydrocarbon emissions from just 30 minutes of yard work with a two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor.”

Pollinators Need Leaves.

Let’s protect pollinators who are working hard protecting us all The trouble with leaf blowers isn’t only their pollution-spewing health consequences. It’s also the damage they do to biodiversity. One of the most valuable things you can do to support pollinators and other invertebrates is to provide them with the shelter they need to survive the winter. Thankfully, that’s pretty easy; all you need to do is do less yard work.

Protect Humans Who Use Gas Leaf Blowers.

The people hired to use these machines are often working-class people, frequently people of color, who are already disproportionately impacted by environmental racism and classism.

Protecting human health means rethinking the tools we rely on.

With gratitude for these resources & organizations: (Xerces Society, The Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), Robin Wall Kimmerer, Environment America, Greenpeace)