Home Depot, influencer? When it comes to lawn equipment, that just may be the case.
Montclair banned gas-powered or internal combustion lawn equipment like leaf blowers between May 15 and Oct. 15. Maplewood banned the use starting January this year.
And New Jersey lawmakers are considering limited gas-powered lawn equipment throughout the state.
It’s part of a trend toward electric equipment that advocates say is quieter, cleaner and safer than its noisier, gas-powered alternatives for lawn maintenance.
And now, the nation's largest home improvement store, the Home Depot, will contribute toward the move away from gas-powered lawn equipment. Last week the chain announced that by 2028, 85% of its outdoor lawn equipment would be electric rather than gas-powered.
That means leaf blowers, trimmers and lawn mowers from the Home Depot would run on rechargeable batteries, a move that pleases environmental advocates.
“We have long advocated for a year-round ban on [gas-powered equipment] in favor of safer, greener and quieter alternatives like using electric or manual equipment, mulch-mowing, and leaving some leaves in garden beds and under trees to nourish and protect the soil and to support natural habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife,” Peter Holm, the spokesperson for Quiet Montclair, a group dedicated to the issue of gas-powered leaf blowers, said in May.
A man walks around the Wild Duck Pond Area as a leaf blower clears leaves from the park in Ridgewood, N.J. on Wednesday Jan. 11, 2023.
“By innovating residential lawn equipment away from gas-powered combustible engines, we can help make our neighborhoods cleaner and quieter,” said Ron Jarvis, the Home Depot’s chief sustainability officer.
According to a 2020 report by Princeton University, gas-powered lawn mowers account for 5% of air pollution in the U.S.
The Home Depot, in a June 22 press release, estimated that “running a gas leaf blower for an hour creates the same number of emissions as a 1,100-mile drive.”
According to the American Lung Association, the old two-stroke engines used in leaf blowers and lawn mowers often lack pollution control devices, meaning they pose a greater risk to human health.
Landscapers skeptical
The switch to electric lawn equipment will be costly, said Diana Cardenas, co-owner of Upper Mountain Landscaping in Montclair. That will ultimately get passed on to the customer.
“You’re buying the backpack, the battery, the rechargeable unit. It really starts to add up,” she said. “Our guys can do two or three houses, then the battery’s dead. We have to run around and bring them batteries. That’s an additional chore.”
Cardenas said the option for Upper Mountain Landscaping will be to charge a costlier per-hour fee, rather than a flat fee for the entire service of cutting a home’s lawn.
Electric leaf blowers "aren’t advanced enough — the batteries don’t last,” Richard Goldstein, president of the New Jersey Landscape Contractors Association and his Oakland-based company, Green Meadows Landscaping, said in May.
“The problem with batteries — it’s charging them, keeping them charged,” said Kevin McMillan, owner of McMillan Landscape Contractors in Nutley. “How are you going to get these things charged? Are you going to be idling your truck to charge your battery?”
Safety concerns
Peter Holm of Quiet Montclair, left, holds an electric leaf-blower, which his group maintains are a safer, quieter alternative to gas-powered leaf blowers and about as effective. Lynn Hendee, Deb Ellis and David Wasmuth are also supporters and board members of Quiet Montclair. Jose German-Gomez far right, is the founder of Montclair's Northeast Earth Coalition.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, lithium-ion batteries most typically found in e-bikes and e-scooters have been catching fire “with some regularity.”
For example, in New York City, there were 30 battery-related fires in 2019 — a number that surged to 220 last year, according to the city Fire Department.
Just this month, four people were killed in a fire in an e-bike store in Chinatown. In 2021, a 9-year-old boy in Queens was killed and nearly a dozen others were injured when a charging e-scooter battery caught fire.
But experts say these disasters can be avoided, as long as people are vigilant.
“There shouldn’t be any concern if the batteries are made properly and used properly,” said K.M. Abraham, an expert on lithium-ion batteries and a former professor at Northeastern University. “A lot of times, consumers, the people who buy these devices, misuse the battery, and that can lead to problems.”
For instance, a person might charge the battery with a higher current than is recommended in an effort to recharge the device faster, Abraham said. Or they’ll use a charger not recommended for a particular battery, or go to sleep while charging the battery.
“Make sure that you buy a good battery from a reputable manufacturer. People go on the internet and buy from all over the place, and there are a lot of cheap batteries available, imported from various parts of the world. That’s not the way to do it,” Abraham said.
Anna Stefanopoulou, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan, added that the battery should be kept out of the sun when charging and should be kept away from heat sources.
"It's a device that has a lot of energy, the same way you have a tank of fuel with gasoline in it," she said. "These are the types of things you would do even with your gasoline-powered blower."
Home Depot may be influencing change
The Home Depot will source from brands like Ryobi, Milwaukee, Makita and DeWalt, it said in its statement.
It's a move that may convince more people to convert, said Robert Laumbach, a Rutgers University School of Public Health associate professor who focuses on air pollution.
“Home Depot, which I think many homeowners sort of respect as a source of expertise in home improvements, and things like landscaping — for them to voluntarily come out with this I think is more effective from an environmental advocacy point of view than having a regulator come and say, ‘We’re not going to allow you to use gasoline-powered equipment anymore.'”
