I used to have quite a small lawn, all of it easily reached from the house. My lawn mower was electric, powered from the mains by a long cable, and this was not only convenient, as there was no need to keep checking the level in my fuel can, but it was also clean. There were no exhaust fumes, no spills, and no tank to run dry at the far end of the garden just five minutes before I’d finished the weekly cut.
Then we moved to a different house. The garden is an unusual shape, there are long stretches of grass that reach far away from the house, and my old electric mower would only reach the far gate with the help of two extension cables. And so, here comes the combustion engine! Now to be fair, I like my Honda Izy mower, and I’m not planning to dispose of it any time soon. However, I do acknowledge that it might not be the most environmentally neutral machine around, and I know that many people feel quite strongly about the atmospheric clean-up agenda.
So what are the choices for those of us who want to move quickly to a cleaner option? Well, firstly, it is important to remember that electric mowers are not completely clean, so let’s not get too purist about this. The lawn mower engine may not be putting out fumes in your garden, but atmospheric emissions were produced in the course of its manufacture, and a power station somewhere pumps out its carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it generates your electricity, even if it is miles away from where you’re using it.
So what about a manual mower? There’s quite a move back to these nowadays. In addition to their environmental credentials they use up human energy and can contribute to losing some of that undesirable flab. If this is too physically demanding, then electric mowers are the next best for cleanness, but don’t forget the problem of the trailing cables.
This is where modern battery technology comes in. There is now a wide variety of cordless rechargeable electric lawn mowers. The Draper model above has a 24v sealed lead-acid battery, whilst the Bosch machine here has a lithium battery.
Whatever the type of battery, they’re all quieter than petrol-driven mowers. (That might have been helpful last week when I had to stop mowing because a wedding was taking place in the church next door and my lawnmower engine noise was interfering with the happy couple’s special day). They don’t put out fumes, and there’s no liquid refuelling to be done. All you have to do to “refuel” is plug it into the mains when you’ve finished.
Of course there are different sizes, both physical size in terms of the width of cut and also battery capacity, and this last point is important. If you’re buying a cordless lawnmower go for a model slightly larger than what you expect to need. Remember that if your battery runs down before you’ve finished the lawn you can’t just pour a bit more fuel into the tank. Recharging is a longer process than that. So when choosing a cordless electric lawn mower do take careful note of the battery specification, what area of lawn it is recommended for, and how many minutes it will run between recharges.
A subject that I’ve been seeing and hearing in gardening circles more frequently during recent months is atmospheric pollution caused by lawn mowers. It is quite an important issue because most petroleum-powered mowers emit considerable amounts of environmentally harmful exhaust gases.
I’ve heard it said that a typical lawn cut can generate as much “greenhouse gas” as a drive of several hundred miles. Whether or not that is scientifically validated I don’t know, and I’m not going to get obsessive about this, but surely it makes sense to reduce our emissions as much as possible.
Unfortunately there is a lot of scientifically ignorant nonsense talked about this subject, and it is important not to go crazy about it. For example I’ve heard carbon dioxide described as dangerous poison. Actually it is not poisonous to animals, including humans, and after the two main gases (nitrogen and oxygen) the second most common minor component of our atmosphere is CO2. We’d be in a mess if it wasn’t there. It is the basic source of carbon for the growth of green plants, which need to “breath” it in just as we humans need oxygen. The problem is not carbon dioxide in itself; it is a question of how much and where. In other words, maintaining the balance of nature.
So what can we lawn cutters do? I suppose at the extreme we could revert to manual mowers, and for small areas that could well be the best solution as it would give many of us some of the exercise that we’ve been denying to our bodies for far too long. There may, of course, be another side to this argument given that the human body emits carbon dioxide with every breath. I wonder to what extent this is increased when we burn up chemical fuels in our muscles during intensive exercise such as mowing a large lawn. After all, even our bodies generate exhaust fumes. Whether anyone has ever looked at this scientifically I don’t know, but I feel instinctively that the balance of benefit must be with the manual mower and the physical exercise.
Having said that, manual lawn mowers are not a realistic option for everyone, especially where there is a large area of grass to be cut. So how about electric mowers? For small areas, where a power supply is conveniently near to hand, these may be powered by electric cable but advances in rechargeable battery technology have made cordless electric mowers a genuine alternative to those with liquid fueled engines, even for quite large areas.
The use of electricity is, of course, not carbon neutral. The power generation company will have pumped CO2 into the atmosphere long before the electrons circulate in your machine. However, this will be much less than from a typical fuel-inefficient lawn mower engine. Technologies are developing fast, and new options will no doubt be with us before long. Meanwhile we can all play our small parts in protecting the balance of our atmosphere.
- David Murray -
This story is a couple of years old, but I just came across it today. It tells of the CEO of a quality lawn mower manufacturer in the USA who said “No!” to Walmart because he felt that to have his mowers heavily promoted by the giant store would pull down their quality image.
Of course, the arguments were more nuanced than that. There was the impact that it would have on relationships with his network of independent dealers. There was the constant pressure from Walmart for reduced cost (and reduced quality) experienced in the past couple of years while just 20% of his output had been sold to them. He was not going to take the risk of exposing his company to further down-market pressures, so he walked away from what most would have seen as a major business opportunity.
It’s a fascinating story. The make? … “Snapper” lawn mowers. You can read the full story at FastCompany.com.
Happy mowing. Oh, and is your mower of such quality that you’re likely to be able to hand it down as an heirloom, still in working order after a generation of use?
- David -
Which is the correct form? Lawn mower as two separate words? Or lawnmower as a single combined word?
What does it matter? Why bother? Well, apart from a strange interest in the development of words I find it important to understand details such as this in the development of a web site. After all, if I get it badly wrong very few people will ever find my pages. Or is that not true?
Am I talking about correctness in the English language, or am I talking about common practice? And so to the dictionary. The biggest dictionary in our house is one published some years ago by the Reader’s Digest. Surely, they’ll have got it right! Reader’s Digest says, “Lawn mower”.
Then I remembered that a friend of mine has a full multi-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary. What can be more authoritative than that? I pick up the phone. “Brian, how should I spell lawnmower; one word or two?” “That’s a strange question for a Sunday afternoon,” he says, but faithfully goes away to look it up. “Neither,” comes back the answer, “It’s hyphenated.” So now we have three alternatives: lawn mower, lawn-mower, and lawnmower.
Hmm. But for the purposes of a web site I need to know not only how it “should” be spelled, but how people are likely to enter it into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo!. How to find out? Ah, yes! Google Trends is the way forward. Let’s enter lawn mower and lawnmower into a comparative keyword history query and see what we get.
The answer is fascinating. In Ireland the single word predominates. In the United States, Canada and Australia the two word form prevails. In the United Kingdom they’re neck and neck. Interestingly, the OED’s hyphenated form gets a big zero everywhere.
So what does all this mean for my web site and blog? If I use the single word the search engines are likely to send me mostly European visitors; if I use the two word form, mostly North Americans. … Answer? Whatever the “official” spelling (if there really is such a thing), use them both.
A Draper Cordless 24V Rotary Lawn Mower in use