Josh Matlow really likes rakes.
“A rake is effective. It never runs out of fuel,” the city councillor for Ward 12 Toronto-St. Paul’s told me over the phone this week on an especially blustery day in the city.
“It’s a wonderful invention. I believe I have at least two rakes. One is plastic and one is metal, both with wooden handles. The positive aspect of using a rake is that you’re not noisy. You won’t create noise pollution and piss off your neighbours. A rake can give you a nice workout. The only danger is stepping on it incorrectly and having it hit you in the face.”
“They are so damn noisy,” Matlow complains about the popular lawn tool. “There seems to be a timer on leaf blowers to always go on just when you’re trying to relax.”
In fact, it’s this anti-leaf blower stance that appears to feed Matlow’s love of the rake: a love sprung from hate, to borrow a phrase from another passionate character caught between the two emotions, albeit in a story with far higher stakes than one about lawn maintenance.
Or maybe not.
After all, Matlow despises leaf blowers not only because they are extremely loud and obnoxious, but because they are terrible for the environment.
According to a frequently cited study by Edmunds, an U.S. site for automotive information, “a consumer-grade leaf blower emits more pollutants than a 6,200-pound 2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor,” a.k.a. a heavy-duty pickup truck.
What’s more, removing leaves from your lawn altogether may itself be environmentally unfriendly. According to conservationists, it’s a good idea to keep a thin layer of leaves scattered across your lawn in the fall because they provide insulation for birds and other wildlife come winter.
It’s for these reasons among many others related to conservation that leaders on city council are trying to limit leaf blower use in Toronto.
Matlow has a rake ally in Coun. Shelley Carroll (Ward 17, Don Valley North), who last year introduced a motion requesting the city produce a report on the environmental impacts of two-stroke engine garden equipment, “including the feasibility of a year-round ban” on such equipment, or a ban from May to September. The motion passed with an amendment from Matlow requesting that city council also report on the noise impact of engine-powered garden equipment in general.
That report is still forthcoming.
In a statement shared with the Star this week, the city’s environment and energy division said, “environmental impacts of two-stroke engine equipment will be included as part of the Net Zero Strategy that is being presented to city council later this year.” (The Net Zero Strategy is a plan to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 or sooner.)
What do city councillors do, then, when they’re tired of waiting for the arrival of one report? They ask for another.
This week Carroll introduced an item to the city’s infrastructure and environment committee requesting that various departments in the city report back in 2022 “with a transition plan and feasibility assessment of phasing out gas-powered leaf blowers for municipal use by 2025.”
This seems like a prudent move. If your goal is to curtail the use of a polluting machine among Toronto homeowners, you should set a good example among municipal staff first.
Yet the question remains, if this issue ever actually moves forward (beyond the commissioning of more reports), how will Torontonians respond? Do we hate the sound of leaf blowers more than we love blasting leaves onto a neighbour’s lawn?
It may depend in the end on where you live. Do you live in a downtown ward where raking a small lot is relatively easy or do you live in a Toronto suburb where it might take you much longer? (Prepare for the never-ending War on the Car to wage a proxy war — on the Car Owner’s Leaf Blower.)
Or maybe you have mobility issues and lifting a 5 kg leaf blower for a few minutes is easier for you than raking your lawn for 30.
Whatever the case, these things are clearly horrible for the environment, annoying and if we are to believe conservationists (which we should) unnecessary. “It’s not justifiable to have that impact on your neighbours,” says Matlow, “and to pollute to the degree that they do. A rake is a viable alternative.”
So is nothing. As in, for once the environmentalists are giving us permission to do nothing to fight the problem: to literally leave the leaves where they lie. Personally, this is the best news I’ve heard all week and it’s what I’m going to do until I die.
But if I ever need encouragement to pick up a rake, I’ll know who to call.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/10/27/hate-the-sound-of-leaf-blowers-the-best-solution-may-be-to-do-nothing-at-all.html