TRENTON, N.J. — The roar of the leaf blower has become an inescapable part of daily life in communities across America, leading towns and states to ban or restrict blowers that run on gasoline.
Though several local communities have already enacted full or partial bans on gas-powered leaf blowers, New Jersey is considering banning them statewide. A state Senate committee on Thursday advanced a bill that would ban such blowers most of the year, but would allow ones using four-stroke combustion engines to be used during peak cleanup periods in spring and fall.
Doug O'Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, said more than 100 cities across the U.S. have banned or restricted gas-powered leaf blowers, which he called a major source of pollution. He said using such a blower for an hour creates as much pollution as driving a car for 1,100 miles . New Jersey's proposed bill, like others enacted in several U.S. cities, would provide financial assistance to the industry to defray the cost of purchasing new battery-powered blowers.“It's retrofitting your truck to be able to charge batteries throughout the day,” he said. "And by doing that, you’d have to keep your diesel engine running, and that causes another issue. This is just a terrible idea.
“We are living in an age of climate change, and we've known for 100 years that burning more fossil fuel puts more CO2 into the atmosphere,” she said.Several golf course management and landscaping companies said they support the idea of a gradual transition to battery power, but want more time to phase it in, possibly enabling more powerful battery-powered models to be developed.
The new assessment from UNEP follows a call from the State of Palestine to take stock of the environmental damage.CALGARY — Canadian oil and gas companies facing a federally imposed emissions cap will decide to cut their production rather than invest in too-expensive carbon capture and storage technology, a new report by Deloitte says.