Blowing in the artificial wind

Wandering down through the Glen this morning I met the park keepers with their leaf blowers. Not quite as annoying as strimmers but close. These are petrol driven devices which emit CO2 and therefore make their own little contribution to Climate Change. A few years ago while researching for a slightly tongue in cheek book "Fifty ways to stuff the planet" I did a bit of research. What follows is the 41st way to stuff the planet.

41: Rake space for a leaf blower.

Autumn, a time of mellow fruitfulness, my arse.  All those bloody trees scattering their knackered old photosynthetic units all over the place. Once upon a time you had to get out the rake and shift them by hand. Nowadays you just strap a leaf blower to your back and blow the buggers away.

What’s the damage?

For a mere £254 you can buy a Husqvarna 145BT with a 40cc engine and an output of 2kW. It chucks out air at over 160mph, uses about 1 litre (0.74kg) of petrol an hour and, in doing so, produces 1.71kg of CO2.

In a typical year you might use the blower for about 10 hours (half an hour a day for about three weeks) and emit 17kg of CO2. To absorb this you’d have to plant about 110 square metres of woodland. About two squash courts worth.

But, even if you did do this, it’d just give you more excuse to go and do it again next year.

Can I be arsed?

Leaves are a bloody nuisance. They sneak in the back door, block up your drains and, if you live where they use the third rail system, stop your train running on time. 

Plus, if you leave them alone all they do is sit around making soil.

Wind-up-ability

This is where your leaf blower really scores. If you wanted to make a noise nuisance then a small petrol engine would be a key ingredient. Just the job, in fact, to take the “quiet and leafy” out of the suburbs. 

I was too lazy to ever try to get the book properly published, though it is available from Lulu.com, but despite that it did get a lot of vitriol out of my system; if only to make room for more.