I've lived in a few different places, and mostly really only encountered leaf blowers either for some larger scale work like cleaning up leaves on a university campus, or for cleaning debris from parking lots.

I've recently moved to an area with single family or attached homes on small lots, and inexplicably, everyone has a leaf blower. Most houses have a driveway and parking area, and about 10 square feet of lawn, but for some reason all the guys are out blowing leaves around... I'm supposing there must be pockets where culturally that's what people do, I certainly don't get it

Yes, it blows leaves. It's also quite obnoxiously loud, so there's noise pollution as well.

I’m also ”from Europe”, and I’ve seen leaf blowers used by both private individuals and local government for the last 15 years at least. Did I see it to the extent that it was ”_vastly_ worse than cars” in terms of pollution? No, not even close. But it’s been there.

Depends where you are in Europe. In France they’re commonly used by town employees to blow stuff off roads. I wish they’d just use brooms

Leaf blowers are much more efficient though. They're not just using them because they're loud and polluting, they're using them despite those attributes, because they easily quadruple a person's effectiveness with regards to moving large amounts of leaves on a flat surface.

I'd be OK with just leaving the leaves on the ground, to be honest.

They start to decompose and get slippery pretty quickly. It’s a safety concern.

If you’re on gravel or sand I agree, leaf blowers are way better. But honestly on Asphalt they seem less effective than a big wide broom.

Yes and leaf blowers were not a common sight in America until the late 80s. How did we get through life before then?

Less efficiently. You can get by without leaf blowers, you just need more people and it takes longer. You can get by without computers, you just need more people and it takes longer. You can get by without machines, you just need more people and it takes longer.

We tend to favor things that are more efficient, and it's hard to go back, because the citizenry won't be happy if you tell them your plans of quadrupling the work force and raising taxes accordingly.

Less machines, less maintenance, less pollution, less taxes.

> I’m from europe and i have no idea what a leaf blower is

They love the stuff in Ireland. I have no idea why people use it. It doesn't do much better of a job than a rake would. It's completely stupid

> It doesn't do much better of a job than a rake would

That's disingenuous. Raking the yard is a half-day chore for me, that's fairly physically strenuous. Using a leafblower takes like an hour and is really easy- you can stand and point. A leafblower is a non-zero QoL improvement if you have to deal with leaves

Real question: why rake the yard? The road I understand, but what's wrong with just letting the leaves decompose and enrich the soil?

Leaves kill the grass. You want the grass to get light through the fall.

Just mow the leaves once or twice. Grass gets the light, and the leaves get decomposed more easily.

ok? how is that an environmentally better option than using a leaf blower?

It sounds like you have a massive yard. I can’t imagine having to spend more than 20mins raking a standard garden.

Is this a new thing? I’m Irish and never seen a leaf blower in my life (other than one used by a professional groundskeeper).

If you have a large property with tons of trees it is WAY more efficient than a rake

A leaf blower is how you move in the air when flying hooked up to a bunch of balloons:

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