It's a lot of fun to blow the leaves away, but it makes me wonder if I'm begin environmentally naughty. Is there any benefit to blowing that would counter my using up gas for something I could be doing by hand?

I love to blow the leaves also, but I have an electric (plug in) blower. No gas and no guilty feeling that I'm not being "green." But I do have a gas trimmer, and there's no way around having to use that every now and then.

Originally Posted by carl22

... I have an electric (plug in) blower. No gas and no guilty feeling that I'm not being "green."

I think I need someone to explain to me how using coal-produced electricity is better for the environment than using gas-powered things. I hear this a lot about cars, too, and I have never quite understood this.

(Personally, I use a lot of electrical things AND gas-powered things, so I think I'm in deep doo-doo either way...)

Originally Posted by AndyMan

I think I need someone to explain to me how using coal-produced electricity is better for the environment than using gas-powered things.

You will be hard pressed to calculate how many micro grams of coal will be burned, if every one on your block were to run electric blowers, you could easily measure the number of gallons of gasoline...
Cars generally will be charged at night, when the grid load is at it's minimum... the generators have to spin to even if there is no load at your end of the cord....

My electricity comes from the tip of a nuclear fuel rod. I have a sister in Arizona that gets hers from water flowing and wind blowing... but the main point is small loads are going to be unnoticed by the generator at the source... The liquid fuel burned on site is always going to be something... Always going to be better to use electricity if it can be done with small AH demand, or at an unloaded grid time....
KennyV

Thanks for explaining that. I have always wondered about that, and could never get a good explanation. The way you describe it definitely makes sense.

Using electricity to blow grass at home looks ok. Maybe that is an issue in parks. People use gas-powered blowers in parks. Very noisy also, just like trimmers. But to clean the park using rakes takes too much time.

If people do not come to parks because of too many leaves on the ground, better to just leave it like a forest, right? But when people come to parks, less people go to real forests to burn wood in camps. That is my crazy equation about this thing. We need to see big picture :)

I think it is great that you are thinking in envrionmental terms like that. I think if you are asking the question, you probably are leaning towards the manual approach to leaf clean up? Let your conscience be your guide.....

For some people it's not practical to go without a leaf blower. But just imagine if everybody who could do without one went without one. I'll bet that, collectively, it would be a significant amount of gas emissions not going into the environment.