tagged w/ MOWER
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When my Mom was alive she couldn't mow the lawn and wanted to get rid of the old behemoth electric mower we had. She found a great gardener who was only charging $15 and he's come and mow the lawn every other week. Then his prices started to go up until they were $30 each time and he's only show up sometimes once a month. He wasn't really doing anything else like fertilizing the lawn so there were weeds taking over and we decided to make a change.When my Mom was alive she couldn't mow the lawn and wanted to get rid of the old... more
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Spring is here, and your lawn will soon be out of control. Time to start up the old mower — but besides the refreshing color of the grass, is any part of your slow trip across the yard going to be "green"?
Not quite, say environmental experts. The exhaust from traditional gasoline-powered mowers is polluting and puts lots of carbon dioxide into the air, contributing to global warming.
And because of their endurance, power and speed, about 90 percent of all lawn mowers in the U.S. have gasoline engines.
So what about electric mowers, either the plug-in or rechargeable kind? Or the old-fashioned human-powered push mowers?
Well, each of those has its own problems — but let's tackle gasoline mowers first.
Gasoline mowers
There's a simple reason most people have gasoline mowers — they work well and they never need to be plugged in.
"Mowing large lawns is impractical with anything other than a gas-powered unit," says Peter Sawchuk, program leader for home improvement at Consumer Reports magazine. "It's really your only choice — you'd have to break [the lawn] into sections with an electric."
That's why such lawn-care giants as John Deere and Toro make only gasoline mowers for environmental use.
But lest you think you're pushing — or riding — a gas-guzzling hog, there's reason not to. The EPA just last September tightened regulations on gasoline-mower engine emissions.
It's demanding that a 35 percent reduction in exhaust emissions, and a 45 percent reduction in total evaporative emissions (i.e., fumes from the inefficient two-stroke engines), begin in 2009 and be fully implemented by 2015.
"EPA's new small-engine standards will allow Americans to cut air pollution as well as grass," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson in a statement.
Sawchuk says it's time to ditch your old gas mower, which probably doesn't conform to the new EPA standards.
"If your gasoline-powered lawn mower is older than 5 years old," he says, "replacing it with a new mower will give you significantly reduced emissions."
The big lawn-care companies would argue that they're already on top of it.
"We take a lot of time to ensure that we don't have harmful emissions," says Greg Doherty, group director of worldwide product and technology marketing for John Deere. "There are standards for that, and we meet or exceed all of those."
But to some environmentalists, they're all bad.
"The absolute worst thing you can do is use a gas mower on a typical American lawn," says Lloyd Alter, design and architecture writer for Discovery Communications' PlanetGreen and TreeHugger blogs. "It still has carbon dioxide and other gases that are harmful. You can't call anything with gas safe for the environment."
Todd Larsen, director of corporate responsibility at the nonprofit environmentalist group Green America, appreciates the efforts by the gas-mower makers and the EPA, but he says they're not enough.
"We don't recommend people use [gas mowers]," he says. "If you want to go green, use an electric or push mower ... Anything that runs on fossil fuel is going to emit carbon dioxide."
So what can you do if you've got a large lawn and can't give up the gas mower? Buy a no-spill gas can, Consumer Reports' Sawchuk says.
"Spilled raw gasoline in the environment is a much more significant contributor to the ozone degradation and the buildup of smog," he says.
Sawchuk also advises using a gas mower with an overhead-valve engine, sharpening your mower blades at least three times a year and buying a fuel stabilizer to keep the gas in the tank fresh for up to two years.
Electric mowers
Flipping an extension cord back and forth across your lawn is inconvenient, but an electric mower has a cleaner environmental footprint than its gasoline-fueled cousin.
"Even if the electricity that powers them comes mostly from coal, they would still be less polluting," says Green America's Larsen.
FOLLOW LINK FOR REST OF ARTICLESpring is here, and your lawn will soon be out of control. Time to start up the old... more
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