The Dirt on Our Lawn Care

By NIKHIL PANDE & GEORGE ROSE ‘21

At Milton, students joke about the pristine nature of the grass; however, the tools used to keep our campus clean aren’t as perfect as the greenery. In an extensive review of the machines that the facilities staff uses to keep the campus clean, we found that the prospect of switching to electric machinery would reduce noise and emissions and, in many circumstances, would be more cost effective. Moreover, we found that, according to the Shindaiwa owner’s manual, the exhaust from the school’s current weedwackers and leaf blowers “contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” Thus, upgrading to electric equipment would likely be better for not only the environment and the school’s bank account but also the health of community members. 

Milton uses two types of weed wackers: the Shindaiwa T262 and the Shindaiwa T242 (they also uses the T252, but this model is no longer made). We found that the T262, which can be bought for $329 on the Shindaiwa website, emits 3.16 pounds of carbon dioxide per tank. The T242, a slightly larger model that costs $300 dollars, emits 3.58 pounds of CO2 per tank. As an electric alternative to these trimmers, the rechargeable 56 volt 2.5 Ampere Hour (Ah) EGO string trimmer costs only $229, including the tool’s charger. Based on Massachusetts electrical cost data, a full charge of the EGO string trimmer requires only 0.14 kWh of electricity, meaning that each charge costs Milton less than 2.5 cents. On the other hand, given the average Massachusetts gas price of $2.57, a full refill of the T242 costs 46.8 cents, which is almost nineteen times as expensive. 

On the front of leaf blowers, our gas-powered Redmax EBZ8500 has an unmatched blow power of 908 cubic feet per minute, whereas the most powerful electric leaf blower, the EGO Power+ has only 600 cfm. Even though the electric blower costs $260 less than the $560 Redmax blower, the EGO’s decreased blow power would require our maintenance staff to work for longer, thus causing a net increase in price for Milton. But an important feature of the EGO is the sound component. At a maximum sound of 64 dB, eight times quieter than the Redmax blower, the Power+ will somewhat relieve the misery of the angry teachers whose classrooms neighbor the facilities staff’s work. 

But aside from the technicalities of gas blowers, they can pose significant health risks. As previously mentioned in this article, gas leaf blowers emit not only CO2 but also toxic chemicals that can be dangerous when ingested. According to a 2017 New York Times article about leaf blowers, “pollutants that have been linked to cancers, heart disease, asthma, and other serious ailments, escape into the air” as a result of common incomplete combustion. These blowers are routinely used on campus around students who are ignorant of the dangerous chemicals they might ingest. As the Atlantic reported on Washington D.C.’s recent ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, “the reasons for the ban are: the obsolescence of the technology, which is orders of magnitude more polluting than other machines and engines now in common use; the public-health danger, above all to hired work crews, of both the emissions and the damagingly loud noise from the gas blowers; and the rapid advent of battery-powered alternatives, which are quieter and dramatically less polluting.” According to Almanac News, “besides what they kick up off the ground, gas-powered leaf blowers themselves emit specific pollutants the State of California has identified as of concern: hydrocarbons from both burned and unburned fuel, which combine with other gases to form ozone; carbon monoxide; and toxic contaminants such as benzene, 1,3-butadiene, acetaldehyde, and formaldehyde, according to a widely quoted 2000 California Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board report.” There you have it: not only are leaf blowers harmful to the environment and extremely noisy, but they also pose serious risks to our health.

The only potential emissions flaw of electric yard tools involves the indirect emissions of electric recharging. In the state of Massachusetts, the production of one kilowatt hour (KWh) of electricity emits approximately one pound of carbon dioxide according to blueskymodel.org. A full charge of a 2.5 Ah 56 volt battery requires approximately 0.14 KWh of electricity, meaning that each full charge indirectly emits approximately 0.14 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. As stated before, the comparable Shindaiwa T242 directly emits 3.58 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere for each full tank of use. So while electric tools still have an environmental impact, that impact is, at least in the case of the weedwackers, more than twenty-five times smaller than the direct impact of gas powered weed wackers. 

As a school, Milton Academy bears the responsibility of keeping its students safe and teaching them how to be stewards of the environment. The school’s use of these tools achieves none of those things; in fact, it undermines those ideals, making noise and jeopardizing the health of students, faculty, and the facilities crew while preventing Milton from demonstrating leadership on this front. Milton Academy must consider upgrading to electric equipment to set an example to its students and, most importantly, avoid harming those on campus. A clean campus, it seems, doesn’t require such a cost.