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Oakland Bans Leaf Blowers, Trimmers and Other Lawn Equipment That Rely on Combustion Engines (kron4.com) 347

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Oakland has banned the use of leaf blowers, trimmers and other lawn equipment that rely on combustion engines, citing health and climate change concerns. From a report: The city says that the "significant health hazards" to users and residents from the discharge of particle matter and carbon monoxide lead to the decision, as well as unwanted noise pollution. The city recommends using electric or non-motorized options. The ban is included for commercial landscaping or gardening services as well as private usage.
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Oakland Bans Leaf Blowers, Trimmers and Other Lawn Equipment That Rely on Combustion Engines More

Oakland Bans Leaf Blowers, Trimmers and Other Lawn Equipment That Rely on Combustion Engines

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  • Ok so this sounds like the best place on earth. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:22PM (#61124322) Journal

    Saw an article recently outlining just how incredibly bad leaf blowers are for the environment, let alone the noise, my god the noise.

    They're truly the most worthless, annoying things invented by mankind, second only to the "hey, let's buy a dog, leave it in the back yard, neighbours won't care if it barks 12 hours a day at nothing, right?"

    • Re:Ok so this sounds like the best place on earth. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:42PM (#61124400) Homepage
      clearly you dont live in an area where if you dont have one, it takes literal days to clean up in the fall

      • Re:Ok so this sounds like the best place on earth. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:56PM (#61124476)

        I used to live in a house with a couple of trees. Turns out the solution was a big wide push-type snow shovel. It would let us clear a line of leaves about 2' wide and as long as we could push, then once they were in a pile, into the compost bags they went.

        • now change that couple trees to a couple dozen trees. even with a leaf blower, and a lawn mower with a debris collector it takes days to clean up

          • Or choose to live someplace without draconian appearance rules/laws, and whatever gets mowed and mulched gets mowed and mulched and whatever doesn't, doesn't.

            Of course if you are like my neighbor and try to keep a golf-course like lawn (well, as close as you can when you have a dozen goats and 4 horses running around) when you aren't being forced to that is your own personal demon to deal with, good luck.

          • Re:Ok so this sounds like the best place on earth. (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Nehmo ( 757404 ) <nehmo54@hotmail.com> on Thursday March 04, 2021 @08:06PM (#61125004)

            now change that couple trees to a couple dozen trees. even with a leaf blower, and a lawn mower with a debris collector it takes days to clean up

            Why "clean up" leaves? Aren't they natural? What harm do they do?

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              Besides killing the grass and turning your yard into a forest floor, they also give the rats a place to safely live.

              • Besides killing the grass and turning your yard into a forest floor, they also give the rats a place to safely live.

                Seems like a win/win situation, to be honest.

                • Re: (Score:3)

                  by dryeo ( 100693 )

                  Until they over breed, usually from the neighbours bird feeder, and move into your house or garage. Upon moving into your garage, they are likely to find nice soy based insulation in your vehicle and start eating.

            • Fallen leaves on the sidewalk get slippery in the rain. A pedestrian slips on them and breaks their wrist. You as homeowner are liable for having left the sidewalk unsafe, and their insurance company comes after you to pay their bills.

      • Re:Ok so this sounds like the best place on earth. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ohieaux ( 2860669 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @06:01PM (#61124510)
        Typical big city - I know better than you - edicts. When they start making laws that extend beyond their bounds is when things get serious. Keep in your lane folks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        And that's a problem? I like being outside, even though fall is the beginning of the rainy season in Seattle. We used to live in a house with 13 oak and maple trees generating a pile of leaves four feet high and 30-40 feet long every fall. I'll rake leaves every fall for a decade rather than using one of those frelling things for an afternoon.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dfm3 ( 830843 )
        But that's just a couple days a year. Their ire is directed toward those neighbors who use leaf blowers daily, 11.5 months out of 12, to keep their driveways absolutely immaculate by blowing that small handful of pine needles clear down the entire length of the front yard and into the street. And they always insist on doing so at 6:30 in the !&## morning on Saturday, when reasonable people want to sleep in.

      • Re:Ok so this sounds like the best place on earth. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @07:19PM (#61124830)

        clearly you dont live in an area where if you dont have one, it takes literal days to clean up in the fall

        You're so focused on the leaf blower you're missing the obvious far better solution. Personally I use an electric leaf mulching vacuum. Faster, easier, lighter, quieter, cheaper, doesn't smell, and I don't even need to pick up the damn leaves.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )

      If you live in a city or a cookie-cut suburb, then I'm with you. No need for a leaf blower. But if you live like me in a forest with a sloped driveway, not blowing the leaves is not an option. Yeah, I suppose raking them is the alternative, but this is one place that size matters. It takes me about 45 minutes, 3-4 times during fall, to blow leaves off my driveway. Raking that would take at least 2 hours each time. Machines are made to simplify things. A leaf blower is just a machine.

      The other thing a

      • When i've had to clear large areas of leaves, I just use the mower (ride-on or push). Just prop open the side discharge flap, if it has one. Probably won't work well with mulching/bagging mowers with no side flap, but conventional side-discharge stuff moves a lot of air.

        • When i've had to clear large areas of leaves, I just use the mower (ride-on or push). Just prop open the side discharge flap, if it has one. Probably won't work well with mulching/bagging mowers with no side flap, but conventional side-discharge stuff moves a lot of air.

          I use a lawn tractor towing a lawn sweeper, and it still takes hours

      • If you live in a city or a cookie-cut suburb, then I'm with you.

        And if you don't live in a city or suburb, then you definitely don't live in Oakland, so this ordinance doesn't apply to you. Where houses are close together, it's important to stop people from annoying their neighbors. Where houses are far apart, it's not as important.

        Anyway, false dichotomy. They aren't banning leaf blowers, just gas powered ones. Electric ones work just as well, and they're quieter and less polluting.

    • Hey I just have to call you out on something -

      Nobody has any illusions about Oakland being the best place on Earth.

    • Re:Ok so this sounds like the best place on earth. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @06:05PM (#61124530)

      Use a freaking rake! Anyway, the cumbustion engines on leaf blowers and lawn mowers are horrendously bad, they don't have all the attachments that autos are required to have, they're generally two-stroke and you get a lot of unburned fuel coming out the exhaust, etc. It's a very rare lawnmower that is not spitting black smoke out the back when started.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )

      Hey, let's not insult dogs. The problem is yappers.

      Yapper "A leaf rustled. Let me yap at it. That will scare it away." "A blade of grass moved. It's a threat. I'll repel it with my great yap."

      An no, a yapper isn't a dog. If you have one, you have one because you got lost at the pet store or animal shelter. You went to get a cat, made a wrong turn somewhere and came home with that thing instead.

  • Good. Now ban the electric ones too.

  • PLEASE ban mowers! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bussdriver ( 620565 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:30PM (#61124356)

    Every second at home you can hear somebody mowing their grass in the neighborhood. Including the freaks who have a small lawn tractor who don't even have an acre of grass to mow and do so twice a week.

    Besides the fact that these unregulated small engines waste and pollute far more than a large SUV. There is a small industry of repair places and sales because people are constantly having the primitive things fail on them (most often it's from that crap ethanol gas plugging them up from what I'm told by a pro repair guy... they get quite a few sales from people getting sick of the repairs...)

    There are nice human powered mowers out there. I have one. good for small areas and beats walking pointlessly around the area... (for health) or paying a gym to go for a walk.

    • i live on 10 acres..tell me what you wanit me to do
      BR if i dont keep my yard clean, i got idiots who want to fine me.... now if i clean it the same clowns want to fine me..

      • Frankly, the idiots that want to fine you for letting the yard grow a little wild are the real problem. 10 acres is enough for a nice little bit of wildlife, and letting the milkweed and trees and everything else grow is the best thing. Your property being a little wild is probably the nicest thing to happen to the area. I wouldn't want to see 10 acres of grass, but 10 acres of grass growing wild is a lot more pleasant than 10 acres of chopped vegetation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Ten acres? Plow half of it and plant veggies, give the surplus away. Go at the other half with a 50 pound bag of wildflower seeds, find a few endangered species and mix them in.

    • Re:PLEASE ban mowers! (Score:4, Informative)

      by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:44PM (#61124408)

      Lawn mowers have to be 4-stroke engines these days, and I literally buy one gallon of gas at the beginning of summer and it lasts me the entire year (that's cutting my grass every other week from around April until October).

      Somehow I don't think a machine burning a gallon of gas PER YEAR (heck even bump it to 3-4 gallons per year if you have a big yard) is doing anything remotely close to that of an SUV.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        Due to the lack of a catalytic converter, the emissions from those small 4 stroke engines is still vastly higher (at least an order of magnitude more) then an automotive engine many times its size.

        • But again, look at the fuel consumption - most people are burning more about as much fuel in a day in a car vs an entire year with a mower. Even if the emissions are an order of magnitude higher - hell even if they were two orders of magnitude higher - you're still likely getting more pollution from the car.

      • When people say 'pollutes as much as X' with no further qualification, they're often talking about one specific pollutant. I'm assuming it's carbon particulate (which has a much larger immediate impact on air quality than e.g. CO2).

      • If it's 4 stroke, that's great. Growing up I had to use a two stroke, with asthma. I don't think fuel economy is the problem here, it's air quality. And kids aren't standing in the road breathing auto fumes, but they will be breathing in fumes from leaf blowers and lawnmowers being used next to their homes. If you can smell it then you're breathing it.

    • When I lived in a city, every spring I dusted off my push reel mower thankful that I don't have to clean out a bunch of old rotten 2-stroke gas and plugged carburetor. I can push through my whole yard in the amount of time it takes to troubleshoot an unreliable engine. It was a decent sized yard, but a lot of shrubs, trees, and paved walkways meant there was probably only 500 sqft of grass to mow (20x25-ish, but broken up)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      There are even nice small electric mowers that you can barely hear when they're in use.

      Better grass varieties that don't grow as fast and don't need as much water are also hugely helpful, but I guess for some people mowing is their hobby

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      There used do be an idiot across the street who would mow and then vacuum his front yard twice a week. It took him almost the exact amount of time that it took us to make and eat dinner on the patio, and his timing was impeccable. We were so glad when he left that we gave the new owners a bunch of day lily bulbs out of our garden to welcome them.

  • I still use a broom to sweep my driveway after I mow (with my electric mower that's so quiet my neighbors have asked if I've ever mowed at night and I said yes and they realized they'd never heard it). There's a leafblower that uses the mower's battery available from the manufacturer, but sweeping is so fast I've never bothered to buy one.

    But I'm in flyover country so... muh freedums! Rabble rabble! Something something, wait, what were we complaining about again? DoorDash just arrived, brb...

  • Wish My Town Would (Score:3)

    by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:41PM (#61124392)

    Nothing to do with the environment, but I'd love to see these banned. Without fail, EVERY FRIDAY MORNING at 7:00AM there is a crew of 3 guys who all start up their leaf blowers on the house behind me. Friday is a day off for me every other week, so it blows precious days to sleep in. The mowers are a bit better, but still noisy.

    The electric blowers aren't silent, but they are quiet enough that your neighbors 3 houses over can't hear them. Plus, they've gotten good enough that they are very usable for normal residential yards. It's just the commercial lawn crews who don't want to deal with charging or stocking enough batteries to run all day.

    For the homeowner, the electric lawnmowers are great. So much less fussy- no worry about gummed up carburetors or storing gasoline. Just throw a battery in and turn it on. Two high capacity batteries (which quick swap in 10 seconds) does my 1/2 acre.

    • I live out in some rural mountains. Instead of weed trimmers and leaf blowers I hear chainsaws every day. Luckily they're far enough away and my house is insulated enough that I can only hear it when I'm outside.

      I noticed a big difference between my old house with single pane windows and my new house. Not just in terms of temperature but in how much sound manages to come in. Might be worth considering updating windowing and insulation, especially for bedrooms.

      • New windows would be a $10k+ proposition, plus won't allow me to enjoy by back patio in peace.

    • Friday is a day off for me every other week, so it blows precious days to sleep in.

      See if you can switch your alternating Friday off to an alternating Monday off....

      • Nope. Employer just released a rigid policy on that. Besides, Monday tends to be a heavy meeting day, so it's often a tough day to take off as a practical matter.

    • Frankly, small two-stroke engines are a PITA to keep working anyhow. I replaced my gas-powered trimmer simply because the electric was so much more reliable, and frankly, a lot less unpleasant for the ears - my own AND my neighbors. And I've also been getting a number of other electric yard tools as well over the past few years, like a hedge trimmer and small chainsaw for trimming my trees and bushes. We're at a point where the latest battery technology makes these quite practical.

      But damned if I'm going

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      One bad thing about our neighborhood becoming more affluent is that now there are far more people hiring landscapers who show up with their truckload of noisemakers seven days a week.

  • Is that the biggest fish? (Score:3)

    by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:44PM (#61124406)

    I hate fancy yards with grass and their decorative hedges and everything. To me, having an Arizona style front yard or even a prairie yard is more pleasing than grass. But this is shooting a whole bunch of people in the foot. It'd be one thing if you made their sale illegal and forced all new sales to be electric versions. Then wait for the old ones to just die out. Now everyone has to ditch what they have to get everything in electric version. Sales folks at Ryobi are rubbing their palms.

    Plus, why limit it to these only? Why not include all 2-stroke engines?

  • there were so many people that can handle lawn mower noise, I just tune it out.

  • What a shithole. Oakland has a list of problems a mile long - crime, homeless, jobs/economics, transportation, covid, on and on, but thankfully those fucking leaf blowers are dealt with. These problems certainly exist in most (all?) major cities, but those who live in the Bay Area know that Oakland is a special kind of fucked up. No one -- and I mean no one except these couple of city jerk offs -- has been wasting any time thinking about this leaf blower "problem".

    I don't know how to "fix" Oakland, but th

  • Oakland will be paying to replace existing equipment.

    If they are not going to pay people to replace what they've already purchased, I'm guessing there will be "problems"

    I finally bought an electric mower when my previous gas lawnmower died. It works pretty well, except for how long a single battery lasts, as opposed to just tossing more gas into the mower. It took me about 2 hours to do my whole lawn with the 22inch gas mower, and a single battery lasts for about 45 minutes of mowing.

    I usually used about 3-

  • I went electric and never looked back (Score:5, Informative)

    by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:54PM (#61124462)

    Several years ago at my last house I decided to go electric, and bought into a quality system of mulching mower, leaf blower, weed whacker and hedge trimmer that all used the same 80v battery pack (Kobalt brand). In that particular house, and the size yard I had, I needed all of those things to keep nature at bay. EG it took me 1 1/2 hours of pushing the mower around to completely mow the lawn. And over the course of the Autumn it took me 8-16 solid hours of work of just raking, blowing and dragged leaves off the lawn (as a result I now hate deciduous trees)

    There were several benefits over gas powered systems:
    1. They were a lot quieter
    2. The mower was lighter than a gas powered one
    3. Maintenance was not needed
    4. When I needed to clean the underside of the mower, I just turned it over - no worrying about oil and gas leaking out
    5. No keeping a stupid can of gas for them
    6. I had 2 battery packs, and I needed about 1 1/4 to 1 2/3 packs of charge to mow the lawn, depending on the grass length. So by recharging them both there was very little down time when I needed to swap over.

    The only thing I disliked was that the battery pack charge lights weren't visible when I was mowing, so the one way I knew the battery was flat was when the mower just quit mowing. For the other tools you could tell from the sound of the motors how much charge was left in them.

    Since that house, I've gone one step further and moved to a desert area - no grass at all - the yard is just gravel!

  • Acting on old knowledge (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mark of the North ( 19760 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @05:54PM (#61124464)

    In the late 90s, I attended a presentation by Dr. David Suzuki where he mentioned off-hand that two-cycle engines in leaf blowers and lawn mowers were the largest contributor to smog in Vancouver. I didn't believe him, but found the study he was referencing a few days later.

    Ya. It turns out that two-cycle engines are horrendous. The operator gets the worst of it too. Oakland has the right idea.

  • gardening services will install an inverter in their vehicle and plug the electric gear into that (likely while leaving the engine running). I'm sure that will be an improvement.

  • So smug, *forcing* people to do this.

    I hope they are forced to do something they don't like in the future. Like being forced to buy a diesel car after studies show they are still far better than gas engines.... Even if they don't believe it or think it's right.

  • Can't get away from noise (Score:3)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @06:29PM (#61124624)

    When I used to live on a tiny subdivision lot with an HOA I heard leaf blowers and lawn mowers all the time. Now I live on a big lot out in the country. What do I hear? Chain saws, ATVs, dirt bikes.

    It seems to me that Oakland has much bigger problems to contend with than leaf blowers. Rampant crime, flithy streets, terrible public schools come to mind. But I wouldn't expect our elected officials to focus on that. Atfer all, they live in gated communities and their kids go to private schools. Let the riff raff take care of themselves.

  • Fart of humanity (Score:3)

    by dicobalt ( 1536225 ) on Thursday March 04, 2021 @06:36PM (#61124658)
    I just want them to ban dirtbikes and ATVs from streets, not to mention modded exhaust systems you can hear from a literally a mile away.
  • One of the benefits of living in rural "unincorporated" areas is that I'm not beholden to the whims of any city council. I've got a bit of 7 acres of heavily forested land. On the areas that are open, I use my leaf blower, gas weed whacker, hedge trimmer, tiller or one of several garden tractors pretty much daily. I chose to move out of city limits precisely because local councils are becoming more and more likely to insert their opinion into what I am able to do with my items on my privately owned p

  • Pathetic (Score:3)

    by AlexHilbertRyan ( 7255798 ) on Friday March 05, 2021 @04:22AM (#61126104)
    How pathetic why cant people just do it the old fashioned way and simply enjoy the time getting some dirt and so on with the garden and enjoy nature.

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