Walk, bike. Push, rake

I live in a new, planned neighbourhood.  We enjoy the location as all buildings are new, well-kept as are the gardens.  It makes for pleasant walks and it makes us feel good to be able to live in such a place.  It actually has a bit of a resort feel.  Kind of like the resorts I used to go to with my parents as a kid....Hilton Head Island, Hilton Hawaiian Village.  Minus the beach.  

Walking to the local coffee shop this morning I got a sense for the effort required to keep a place looking this pristine (unnatural?).  An army of people was out with leaf blowers, mowers, weed whackers.  All of them belching smoke and all of them belching noise.  I looked at the grass that was being cut and didn't feel that it needed to be cut yet as it was only a few centimetres long.

I just went to the Canadian Government's ETC Pollution Calculation page and figured out how much carbon dioxide a five year old Honda lawnmower with a 5.5 horsepower engine would emit in 60 minutes of mowing.  The answer was 2.54kg of CO2.

Then I compared this to a car that burns 6.5 litres of gasoline per 100 kilometres driven.  BTW, that is an efficient, small engine like a Honda Civic.  The result of driving 15km.....2.6kg of CO2.  During rush hour driving 15km takes me about 25 minutes.

So with all the effort on making cars more fuel efficient we really need to also look at our power tools.  People are car pooling, walking, biking.  Using their own energy as an alternative to fuel.  Why not promote push mowers, scissors and rakes??