Especially gas powered ones. If you are going to blow refuse in the street, can’t you at least do it quietly?
I’m Brazilian. As one can imagine, we do have a lot of leaves, being a tropical country and all.
I have not seen a leaf blower in my entire life, and I don’t understand the obsession with them.
Being in a tropical country, I imagine most/all of your trees are non-deciduous, as in they don’t lose all their leaves in autumn and then regrow in the spring? Imagine all the leaves drying up, falling off, and the mess is left all over the ground. Cleanup is a laborious effort. Leaf blowers speed up the process by blowing the leaves from trafficked locations and/or to more centralized locations that are easier to clean the debris. Helpful, noisy, and often environmentally unfriendly.
The massive jacaranda mimosifolia (native to Brazil) which is dominating my front garden, laughs at your suggestion that it does not leave much mess on the ground.
It regularly carpets the area below it in purple flowers, tens of thousands of small leaves, hundreds of twigs/seed pods and a few larger dried branches. Not just one season either - it flowers multiple times a year with how weird the weather is nowadays. The birds and bees like it though so we’re cool.
I’m always taken aback by the hate. Where and how do you guys live that this is an issue?! Let alone a major annoyance?! I can scarcely imagine noticing leaf blower noise. It’s no worse than gas mowers and those are everywhere (or used to be), and go for far longer. Is this just a circle-jerk complaint kinda thing?
I know everyone around here thinks they’re an ADHD, autistic, OCD mess, but can no one tune out background noise? (No, you’re not special, more likely an normal adult human with modern life issues.) If anything it should be old people bitching as hearing discretion gets more difficult in middle-age+.
The homeless guy that lives behind our Lowe’s probably gets annoyed at the 9PM blowing, but that’s a 20-30 minute thing, and not too late. (Always felt a bit bad when I closed.) I pick every tiny bit of plastic out though. Not in my waterways!
A bit snarky, I know, but those were serious questions.
And BTW, organic refuse gets blown in the street because passing vehicles reduce it to dust very quickly. All organic, no harm no foul in my book. Also, it’s hellacious to corral that stuff for sweeping, no point.
EDIT: This post reminded me I need a new battery blower. And if you think 5-minutes of noise while I blow out my truck bed and driveway is too much, I don’t know what to tell you.
I know everyone around here thinks they’re an ADHD, autistic, OCD mess, but can no one tune out background noise?
Drag is often in physical pain and crying on the floor because of the leaf blower, but sure, autism is fake.
