The move to ban or restrict the use of leaf blowers because of the noise they generate is another one of those just-won’t-go-away issues that continues to pester the landscape industry. By the narrowest of margins, the grounds management sector, represented in their lobby efforts by Landscape Ontario (LO), has managed to retain the use of this labour-saving device several times over the past five years. But, with the dogged determination the industry has come to expect from always-vocal activist minorities, this issue has surfaced once again.

     There are a number of peculiarities about the leaf blower issue worth noting. Banning or restricting the use of leaf blowers is not a high priority for most residents of the City of Toronto or other municipalities threatening similar bans. Across Canada, complaints tend to come from areas such as Toronto’s Forest Hill and Rosedale, or their equivalents in Montreal and Vancouver. It is not fair to assume, however, that this is just a problem of wealthy people with nothing better to do with their time than complain to City Hall about trivial matters. A visit to any of these neighborhoods on any given weekday in the summer or fall will reveal an abundance of service vehicles, many of them landscape maintenance trucks parked in driveways or at the curb. These neighbourhoods, which provide our industry with much sought-after maintenance contracts, are usually blessed with an abundance of mature, leaf-dropping trees. In the absence of lawns because of the dense shade, the gardens tend to be filled with shrubs and ground covers. It all adds up to an environment requiring an ongoing use of leaf blowers and the noise generated by maintenance equipment, can be constant.


     While sound is measured in decibel levels, and there are all kinds of published statistics that show many makes and models of leaf blowers to in fact be less noisy than many other motor-driven appliances, in all fairness it must also be acknowledged that it is not the decibel level as much as the high-pitched quality of the noise generated by leaf blowers, that bothers most people.

     Input from the City of Toronto Parks Department, which has come to depend on the labour-savings advantages of leaf blowers, has in the past been a critical factor in the retaining the use of leaf blowers for the landscape industry. Fortunately for the landscape industry, more recent attempts to exclude the parks departments from proposed restrictions have since been rescinded.

     During the past year, the leaf blower issue in the City of Toronto has come under the jurisdiction of the health, planning and economic development committees. It is scheduled to be voted on at the April Council meeting, and should be resolved by the May issue of Horticulture Review reaches our readers.


     The four councilors charged with resolving this issue, and the industry represented by LO, are interested in having a negotiated settlement in place before this issue is once again presented for a vote by Toronto City Council. Already, they have agreed that a usage ban will not apply to commercial use, and residential use will not discriminate between homeowner and contractor use. Multi-residential use has not yet been determined. The main issue to be resolved are the months of the year that leaf blower use will be banned entirely on residential properties, with councilors suggesting a ban from April 1 to September 30. LO will attempt to reduce the restricted period, as it accommodates the need for fall leaf removal but does not provide adequate time at the start of the season for spring clean-up.

     With their labour-saving properties making home maintenance affordable, small equip­ment powered by two-stroke engines has revolutionized the grounds maintenance industry. In the same way that their introduction increased the size of the marketplace, the industry can only assume that their elimination – or at least the elimination of small equipment – would have a corresponding negative impact. And finally, labour- and therefore money-saving properties aside, it would be difficult to persuade employees, whether they are in the public or private sectors, to make the switch from motorized equipment to rakes and brooms.

     Always at the forefront of LO’s lobby efforts in this regard, executive director Tony DiGiovanni notes: “The proposed by-law to restrict the use of leaf blowers may silence the critics for a short while, but we can be assured that the use of two-stroke engine powered equipment will continue to be a contentious issue, if not for the noise they make, then for the air pollution they cause. A proactive approach involving a phase-in of less noisy and less-polluting four-cycle engine equipment, would almost certainly work in the industry’s favour.”

Leaf blowers and the industry