subject: Will Cordless Lawn Mowers Help You to Save the Environment? [print this page] Will Cordless Lawn Mowers Help You to Save the Environment?
One of the reasons given by manufacturers for buying cordless lawn mowers is that they are more environmentally friendly than their gas powered counterparts. But is this really the case? This article takes a closer look at these claims and attempts to unveil the truth.
The main comparison in this instance is with gas powered mowers. Of course these use gasoline which is a fossil fuel and clearly not renewable. Whilst lawn mowers do not use anything like the amount of fuel used by your average family car, anything that reduces fossil fuel consumption has to be good as clearly this is a source of energy that is finite.
The second issue is in relation to emissions. Whilst mowers are by no means the largest contributor to greenhouse gases, they do nevertheless throw out a certain amount of exhaust fumes and will make a contribution to pollution to the atmosphere. In proportion to the size of engine, gas powered lawn mowers produce a high level of pollution as they do not tend to run as efficiently as their counterparts on the road.
Cordless lawn mowers clearly run on electricity from the mains in your home. Let us compare first with the corded electric mowers. Cordless models will actually be slightly less efficient as a certain amount of power is lost in the charging process. However, this does need to be balanced against the limitations of corded models where you are clearly limited as to how far you can go from your power supply by the length of your power cable. You could use a long extension cable, but this has safety implications, and also the longer the cable the less efficient your mower becomes.
Comparing with gas powered models, clearly the cordless model does not produce any emissions at all in your back yard, so this has to be good doesn't it? Well, of course this rather depends upon your electricity supplier. If your supply of electricity comes from a green source then you can rightly claim that your cordless mower is truly green. However, if your supplier produces their power primarily through fossil fuels then the answer is a little more complex, as you mower will still be responsible for emissions, but just not at your home.
The key question is whether the amount of emissions produced from charging the battery of your cordless lawn mower is less than that produced by a gas powered lawn mower. If you think this through then surely the answer to this question has to be "yes" as you are simply charging the battery from an existing power supply that is distributed to a large number of homes and you are taking just a tiny fraction of this. Whereas, the engine from a gas powered mower produces emission directly into the atmosphere.
