Calgary petition aims to ban gas-powered leaf blowers

A Calgary petition is calling for an end to gas-powered leaf blowers.

Project Calgary, a citizen advocacy group made up of volunteers and community leaders, says it wants to make the city a better place by banning the blowers. The petition is hosted on their website, and has more than 1,500 signatures.

????????PETITION: City Council must ban gas powered leaf blowers in Calgary.#yyc #yyccc

????SIGN HERE: https://t.co/ytH7bLasXx pic.twitter.com/DEAllJpdkM

— Project Calgary (@project_calgary) April 16, 2022

Project Calgary says several cities across North America have already banned the blowers, particularly in the United States, but the wheels are in motion to ban or restrict them in places like Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver as well.

With frequent snow in the city, several citizens and companies use gas-powered blowers to clear snow off walkways, something Project Calgary says can be bad for the environment, especially in the middle of a climate emergency.

“It’s really low-hanging fruit to address amongst all the much more challenging actions to take,” said Peter Oliver with Project Calgary. “Because they are so cheap and lightweight, they don’t have the same emissions control, so they cause much more pollution.”

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Oliver also says Calgary is overdue to consider phasing out the gas-powered blowers, not just because of pollution, but because of how much of a racket they make.

“Being woken up at four or five in the morning because someone is blowing snowflakes off of the sidewalk is pretty ridiculous,” he said.

As the frustration about loud leafblowers grows, Oliver said there are better alternatives out there, up to and including scrapping the devices altogether.

“Surely, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago people weren’t using leafblowers to remove snow from sidewalks or leaves from lawns. It’s not like we need to reinvent the wheel here.”

While it may seem easy for an individual to make the switch to an electric or battery-powered leaf blower, for landscapers, it’s a different story.

Joe Berry, president of Yardworx, said the gas-powered option simply works better and it comes down to getting snow off the ground before it turns into ice.

“It would be a lot more difficult to do our job,” Berry said. “And it would be a lot more difficult to ensure that, during the winter, the asphalt or the sidewalk is blown and bare.”

https://twitter.com/Tommy_Slick/status/1516558527782789126

The main reason landscapers use blowers, Berry said, is they are powerful and work quickly at moving snow aside before the freeze-thaw cycle takes hold and eventually turns it to ice. In addition, it is much easier on the workers as opposed to using shovels or brooms and this in turn lessens the cost on the consumer as generally workers are being paid by the hour to remove snow from around homes, condo complexes, or businesses.

Berry said the electric or battery-powered versions are generally weaker than the gas-powered ones, and making that change would come at a cost, both in the time it takes to complete a job and in replacing equipment.

“I don’t see that as something that could be realistic,” Berry said. “There’s only a few brands to choose from on the market that are commercial grade, you’re talking thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.”

He added that while they would only need a few gas cans on hand to complete a day of work with traditional blowers, they would need to have a lot of batteries in stock and charged in order to make sure they can finish a long day of clearing snow around the city.

“You’re going to need some way to charge those batteries during the day. You’re going to need to run a vehicle, it’s going to have to be charging and it’s going to have to charge all day long. The batteries don’t last that long.”

Oliver dismissed some of these points though, and already there is a growing movement in many other cities to ban gas-powered blowers. This includes strict noise bylaws in places like Vancouver or Edmonton, and an outright ban on gas leafblowers in California due to take effect in 2024.

“Calgary city council would by no means be blazing a new trail here, and to their benefit the bylaw and the work into that is being done by other municipalities. It could be as easy as a cut and paste exercise of the legislative and bylaw changes they need to do to go ahead with this.”

That said, Oliver said he does envision working with the industry on establishing best practices to make sure nobody is left behind.

Considering the petition is getting quite a bit of attention already, Oliver feels the days of the gas-powered leafblower are numbered.

“For years, we continue to have people reach out about how much they can’t stand it, how they’d like to do something about it,” he said.

However, for a landscaper like Berry, it is hard to picture doing the job without such a tool, and you would still be bothered by an electric blower doing the same job although it might take longer and may not be as effective on a day where we’re toiling from a thick snowfall.

“It’s obvious that you want to get the job done as fast and efficient as possible,” he said. “Which one would you want to use?”