Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2026/01/portlands-gas-powered-leaf-blower-ban-goes-into-effect.html

by speckx • 7 months ago

73 117 7 months ago

I would gladly be part of a neighborhood battery swap pool if it would help get rid of the near constant running of gas powered lawn equipment every morning. The sound and pollution are such a menace.

lm28469• 7 months ago

I've witness two municipal employees using gas powered blowers on bushes for like an hour right in front of my building. It's completely useless because no one ever goes in the bushes (duh), and it's depleting the ground from nutrients for no reasons.

We really have to stop acting like gas is free and unlimited, burning fossil fuels used for legitimate reasons is bad enough, but burning them for such dumb tasks is an insult to nature.

sidewndr464• 7 months ago

I don't find gas leaf blowers exceptionally annoying. They aren't really anymore annoying that anything else going on in my area. It's what leaf blowers are used for that bother me. I see people just using them to blow leaves either into the street or into neighbors yards. What is the utility in this? Do they think leaves disappear?

potato37328423• 7 months ago

Those bushes they're fluffing up likely only exist because in order to get the stormwater calculations to code they had to put them there for absorption for rain runoff (i.e. part of a SWPP). Or meet some stupid municipal requirement that precludes too much drab solid frontage on a building.

You paid for half a dozen people to spend a bit of labor on what would have 50yr ago been a simple "sidewalk for walking go here, grass everywhere else" exercise. And then every week you get to pay again to be annoyed by them maintaining it (in perpetuity, as they are required to by law, assuming it's part of a SWPP).

teeray• 7 months ago

I couldn’t fathom running lawn equipment in the morning. If I try to mow in the morning my clippings are just globs of wet spinach thanks to all the dew. I get much better performance out of the equipment if I wait until the afternoon once everything has had a chance to dry out.

olyjohn• 7 months ago

Good luck, electric leaf blowers are not quiet at all.

oooyay5• 7 months ago

I actually didn't know this was coming up and just bought an electric. They all kind of suck except for the Ego and the Ego is like $250.

Portland has gotten quite a bit more expensive. We've begun rejecting taxes, which as the self-selected second highest taxed city in the nation is new. Our economy has struggled to return post-COVID lockdowns. There's a lot more I could say but people are really feeling the economic squeeze. I doubt this will help, but is pretty minor when you think about housing, electricity, gas, and water costs that continue to rise as wages go down in the city. I call this place the city of a thousand cuts, there's a lot to like, but there's a lot that hurts too.

dabeeeenster• 7 months ago

Oh no, I cant annoy everyone in a 500m radius for 20 minutes once a week by blowing all the leaves that have fallen into my garden into my neighbours garden. Did I get it right?

oooyay5• 7 months ago

My point was you can still buy the gas ones in the store and they're substantially cheaper than the Ego I bought. I live in East Portland, which is why I was talking about cost. I wish the kind of suburban problems you're describing are what we deal with.

analogpixel2• 7 months ago

If you can't afford a leaf blower, you could try using a $10 rake. they usually work better and faster than a leaf blower most of the time anyways.

bluGill7• 7 months ago

If the hand rake isn't enough you can put a rake on a small tractor (or lawn mower) and it is a lot easier to control where the pile ends up.

oooyay5• 7 months ago

In East Portland we're mostly dealing with needles from Douglas Firs. I'm not sure this will help much, or be easier. Most people I know that use a leaf blower around here use it to clear pathways and the streets after cones and needles drop because the city doesn't send street cleaning this far.

throwaway270925• 7 months ago

$250

Think of all the rakes you could buy with that!

kjkjadksj3• 7 months ago

This ban has been around for about 20 years in LA and is not enforced at all, no blowing 500ft of a residence. Recently they banned sales of gas blowers. Everyone’s gardener uses a gas leafblower still because that is what gets the job done in their time constraint.

bluGill7• 7 months ago

Battery operated leaf blowers are just as good - but few people are willing to try them. I don't know why. Batteries are more expensive up front, but they pay off long term.

jjav2• 7 months ago

Particularly for a contractor who uses it all day with no opportunity to recharge, they would need enough batteries to last all day. Not cheap at all.

jo-m• 7 months ago

In Sep 2025, voters in Zürich, Switzerland, approved a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers as well. Additionally, even electrical ones can only be used October-December. Source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-democracy/zurich-voters-b...

1970-01-01• 7 months ago

Because it's too dangerous for ordinary citizens to use gas power?

Context: https://www.oregon.gov/osfm/pages/self-serve-fueling.aspx

mothballed6• 7 months ago

That's a jobs program, safety was just the thinly veiled excuse.

jermberj3• 7 months ago

Bingo. Also, it's effectively dead. I live in Multnomah county and since that's gone into effect (in 2023), I have only ever pumped my own gas.

phendrenad2• 7 months ago

Gas-powered leaf blowers could be fine, but 99% of the time they're awful, cheap, horribly-maintained hunks of junk that emit horrible clouds of smoke that just floats at ground level for 15+ minutes. Next up ban non-electric cars in the city limits.

Zigurd3• 7 months ago

Many big Chinese cities banned gas motorcycles and scooters long ago. Taipei did not. You can smell the obvious difference. Electric buses make a big difference too.

trgn• 7 months ago

after not visiting for like a decade or so, being back in europe, the presence of electric cars in the city has improved quality of life enormously.

closer to home, one neighbor bought a hybrid, the other an electric truck, and it is so much more calm and quiet.

pfdietz2• 7 months ago

Reading the law strictly, a leaf blower powered by a gasoline electric generator would be allowed, if the generator rests on the ground.

A gasoline leaf blower (or vacuum) that you ride instead of carry would also be allowed.

kridsdale1• 7 months ago

That would at least be much more efficient.

potato37328423• 7 months ago

A gasoline leaf blower (or vacuum) that you ride instead of carry would also be allowed.

That's likely an intentional exception because they don't wan't to have to field calls from every busybody who sees the someone riding a bagger equipped mower around in the fall (which serves both the purpose of a final mowing and picking up all the leaves)

pfdietz2• 7 months ago

"Walk behind" leaf blowers too. These can be had for as little as $400.

johnebgd• 7 months ago

I bought a corded electric snow blower this year for my driveway. My neighbor has a gas powered one. I sold mine after two uses because it was so ineffective it mostly just clogged. It is a highly rated unit on Amazon. My neighbor has used his for years.

I hope this kind of environmentalism never comes for winter gear. At least not until we have fuel cell technology that far exceeds what batteries can offer.

BenjiWiebe• 7 months ago

There's good battery powered stuff out there, and there's a lot of bad battery powered stuff out there. Hopefully the good gets more common and the bad gets less common.

I think batteries are good enough for your needs, just that there's too much junk on the market.

mynameajeff2• 7 months ago

Yeah outside of areas with very light precipitation a pretty hefty snowblower is definitely required. In my experience the weaker models are enough of a waste of energy to where I questioned if I'd save effort just hand shoveling. Everyone I know with a nice gas powered one has had the same one for years and can clear out the entire block with relative ease.

andy99• 7 months ago

I don’t think it’s environmentalism, I think that’s unfortunate just the pretense because it gets traction.

At least what I’ve found, now with more people working from home, there is more attention paid to intolerably noisy stuff that goes on when we used to be at work. I lived near a private school with a big grounds that had these idiots come and rev their leaf blowers for days every fall and spring, and it was basically impossible for me to work. I don’t especially care about the environmental impact and am sort of angry that people use the environment as a pretence when there are certainly more effective ways to be environmentally friendly. But the noise is intolerable, generally very supportive of the bans, though I think it should be about blanket norms on what noise levels are allowed and not about specific technologies.

Zigurd3• 7 months ago

Noise is environmental pollution and detrimental to health.

senbrow2• 7 months ago

Corded yard tools will always suck because they can only pull <15A on a standard US outlet. They just don't have the juice.

It's always better to go with batteries for electric outdoor stuff for that (and other) reasons.

jjav2• 7 months ago

What kind of batteries are you running that can support the equivalent of 15A AC for hours?

I have both a battery leafblower and a corded one. The corded is far more powerful and of course does not run out. The battery one is quick and convenient for small cleanups but only gets about 10 minutes from a full charge, then it's back to the charger for hours.

Recently I cleaned up a large roof full of leaves, took about an hour with the powerful corded leafblower. That would've taken weeks with the battery one given the small power and the ~10 minute runtime.

I mostly use the battery one since it's easier and most jobs I do are tiny. But it is no substitute for the corded one.

Zigurd3• 7 months ago

I know the scale isn't comparable but I much prefer an electric chainsaw to a gas chainsaw. I own both kinds because every couple of years something big falls across my driveway that I can't lift without cutting it up. Mixing two-stroke fuel correctly so I don't foul the spark plug is a hassle, and something I do rarely enough that I always need to look up how to do it. Breathing two-stroke exhaust fumes is no fun at all. My cheap electric chainsaw has better torque, which makes it even easier to use. The only consumable is bar and chain oil, and after a while the chain itself.

gambiting• 7 months ago

I wonder if you've accidentally purchased an inferior product by buying a corded one - and I guess that's just a problem of American outlets being limited to 110V and generally ~10 amps or so, because yeah, I can't imagine a 1000W blower being very powerful. Battery powered ones like this:

https://www.agrieuro.co.uk/snapper-esxd20s82k-battery-powere...

Are considered pretty much as good as petrol ones over here, but yeah, if you limited it to only 1000W I guess it would struggle too.

virgil_disgr4ce• 7 months ago

What is "this kind of environmentalism"?

jtlisi• 7 months ago

I bought a 500 dollar snowblower and an additional 500 dollars in batteries (about 24A total) and it's totally insufficient.

I've converted to electric for everything but the the snowblower is the only thing Ive considering switching back to gas.

To be fair my driveway is 100+ feet. I think this unit would be fine for a smaller driveway.

bryanlarsen3• 7 months ago

If you're in North America, you can only get 1800 watts from a cord. It's not enough to blow anything but light snow.

OTOH, an 80V battery can easily draw 1000 watts+. A good snow blower has 4 of those. That's more than enough, comparable to a gas engine but with way more torque.

bluGill7• 7 months ago

This is about leaf blowers which do not need nearly as much power to function. I don't think anyone is using a leaf blower in such a way that gas is better (there are tractor mounted ones that might be better for some applications - but tractors are diesel powered)

I had a corded electric snow blower 20 years ago and it was great for light snows, but I needed the gas one for larger snows. Cordless tools often have more power than corded because there is only so much power you can get from a plug - of course the battery discharges fast when doing this.

noodlesUK• 7 months ago

Whilst I seriously doubt that this will be regularly or universally enforced, I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying, and that especially in built-up areas it's not really acceptable where good alternatives exist. Noise pollution is usually very avoidable, and it can be quite disruptive and sometimes damaging to health.

Further, where I live (in the UK), there needs to be a serious reckoning about modified cars and road noise. At least 5-10x daily people drive through the city centre near my home with cars modified with unbelievably loud pop and bang ECU tunes and exhaust noise (close to as loud as gunfire). This kind of deliberate noise pollution is exceptionally antisocial behaviour and should not be tolerated by society.

throwway1203853• 7 months ago

We have the same problem where I live in the US. When I get some free time I'm going to lobby our state congress to have the sale of them banned, because it's the only way to get people to stop installing them. There is a law against driving them but it's impossible to enforce because there's no means of measuring the sound and associating it with the vehicle quickly enough to enforce it.

I'd love to have an ALPR system that localizes the noise and snaps a picture of the plate and vehicle and sends them a ticket in the mail.

pc862• 7 months ago

Noise enforcement is a normal thing in areas that want to enforce it. It happens exactly the same way speed enforcement happens, the officer has a device that measures it and can present that information in court if the other party disputes it.

The problem for both noise and speed enforcement is entirely a problem of will. Some jurisdictions simply don't care, or just do targeted enforcement to drive revenue but not actually change driving habits. Do any driving around the country and you'll see areas where people regularly drive 20mph over the speed limit and areas where people barely go 5 over.

pbmonster• 7 months ago

German police have a what amounts to a dyno mounted on a truck bed, and they pull over suspicious cars and sound check them while an officer goes through the gears on the dyno.

Failing that test is expensive, and you don't see your car again for a few weeks. They revoke your permission to operate the vehicle on public roads, so in addition to the fine, you face fees (towing, storage of car in evidence locker, towing your car to a shop after getting it back in order to make it street legal, then redoing the road-worthiness certification).

mc32• 7 months ago

Some of the most annoying offenders are motorbikes who almost see it as an obligation to revv as annoyingly as possible every chance they get on residential neighborhoods.

It’s not all of them. Some ride responsibly but my god, some are extremely good at being the most annoying human beings on earth.

potato37328423• 7 months ago

This is such a bad idea I don't know if you're serious, or if you're satirizing these kinds of people or an accelerationist looking to burn down the credibility of your state legislature.

The right thing to do is to ban their use on a local level pursuant to some specific criteria is one thing (as many municipalities do, and Portland took a step further by doing categorically city wide). To ban their sale (but not use, are you kidding?) state wide is a great example of not only crap law, but the exact sort of minutia that the state level government should not be regulating and is necessarily proceeded by the sort of evil "I know best, damn the exceptions" world view that underpins much of the bad policy that sours people on the same institutions you are trying to use to solve what you perceive to be problems.

cmxch• 7 months ago

I’d love to see it get smacked down in the courts.

altairprime2• 7 months ago

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera...

NYC installed these. Turns out with a city noise limit of 76 and ticketing those in excess of 84dBa, that you’ll ticket certain street ‘legal’ cars whose noise levels can reach into the 90s (!) if driven improperly in-city. Always glad to see technology progressing; I hope it spreads elsewhere.

davidbanham• 7 months ago

It’s a pretty solved problem. In NSW, Australia we have automated systems for heavy vehicle noise fines. (They could of course be used for regular vehicles as well, we just don’t)

For all vehicles the police can issue a defect notice to anything that seems too loud. The owner then has to present to an inspection station and prove that they’re compliant. If they don’t show up or don’t test as compliant their registration is voided and they’re fined. Of course, they can remove the modification before visiting the induction station then reinstall it afterwards, but that gets pretty time consuming pretty fast and people largely stay within the bounds of reason as a result. The system isn’t perfect but it works fine.

phoronixrly• 7 months ago

The notion of leafblowing is also mindboggling to me... You don't need a leafblower to clean up your driveway, and leaves on a lawn will turn into soil.

soco• 7 months ago

My neighbour has a golf court style yard and constantly provides friendly suggestions how to better take care of my yard - with fruit trees and wild flowers. There are no mechanisms he could force his views around here, but boy would he love that.

BoneShard• 7 months ago

More likely leaves on a lawn will destroy it and will create a dirt patch, at least this is what happens in PNW (Seattle & Portland). I have giant maple trees next to my house and I get 2 feet of leaves in my backyard every fall, if you don't remove them you get a breeding ground for rodents, you get mold and dirt everywhere (and clogged gutters, clogged street drains) and standing water. And it's not only leaves, I'm getting fir/cedar needles and maple seeds on my drive way, good luck removing it without a blower.

boringg2• 7 months ago

What I find interesting about this ban: probably mostly makes sense in the for city for low workloads however the electric blowers (even the good ones that I am sure the city isn't paying for) are underpowered for real work leaf workloads. They operate as a midlevel gas powered blower.

As someone who is on board with electrify as much as possible - I still see where there are limitations and chokepoints.

Though for noise pollution makes a lot of sense.

bryanlarsen3• 7 months ago

They shouldn't be underpowered. Small electric motors are way more powerful per mass/volume than small gas motors. You'd have to use a backpack mounted battery pack, but contractors are already doing that.

quickthrowman• 7 months ago

Leaf blowers with EC motors and backpack battery packs perform just as well as the gas versions.

SirFatty• 7 months ago

"I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying,"

Hence the ban.

cainxinth• 7 months ago

There is another issue. The 2-stroke gas engines in backpack leaf blowers emit very toxic exhaust. Much worse than a 4-stroke. The landscapers are breathing that in all day.

arandomsapien• 7 months ago

there needs to be a serious reckoning about modified cars and road noise. At least 5-10x daily people drive through the city centre near my home with cars modified with unbelievably loud pop and bang ECU tunes and exhaust noise

I live in Portland and we have the same issue all over the city. They are much louder and more frequent than gas power leaf blowers. There are supposedly laws against them, but they are not enforced.

mynameajeff2• 7 months ago

My last apartment had the basic unending sound of a leafblower from Spring to late Fall, nearly every morning, unending. Never once did I find myself thinking "wow I sure do hate sight of fall leaves" or "this grass really needs the mm of grass every meter removed", yet they were paid to come multiple times a week year round and blow things around for hours on end. Felt like such a waste in an otherwise neglected apartment complex as far as maintenance.

I get the use of leafblowers for some. I lived in the deep woods and we'd have to clear a pretty large swath of area every fall to not swim through shin-deep leaves for half the year, but if you already are in an area with light enough tree density to grow nice grass I just personally don't understand the utility of some 1000CFM gas leafblower. I got my parents a relatively cheap electric leafblower and it's been excellent for clearing their driveway and paths.

It's definitely a more personal gripe, but those obnoxious droning leafblowers are one of the worst sources of noise pollution in suburban areas by a large gap.

owenthejumper• 7 months ago

My town (East Coast) did this early in the year. Nobody blinked, everyone moved to electric.

yabones• 7 months ago

This is a good thing. It might inconvenience some old suburban men that have no hobbies other than making their lawn look like astroturf, but those of us that breathe air regularly should be asking for this in their own jurisdiction.

Unlike your car, a four-stroke engine with a catalytic converter, a leaf blower is a two-stroke that burns oil by design. The amount of particulate emissions is hard to understate, and the amount of NOx these belch out is staggering. Asthma, cancer, heart disease, COPD, all are on the table with this type of system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stroke_engine#Emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_eff...

throwway1203853• 7 months ago

Most of them are four-stroke now. They just don't have any muffler on them.

kube-system3• 7 months ago

I'm not sure where you are located, but that is not the case in the majority of the US. In most of the US they are overwhelmingly 2-stroke.

Just checked a couple local hardware store websites too to make sure I wasn't crazy... there aren't any 4-strokes leaf blowers available in-store, they're all 2-stroke.

mothballed6• 7 months ago

A lot of 4-stroke don't have much emissions controls either although it does burn cleaner than a two stroke. If you buy heavy equipment like excavator or tractor under 25hp you can get it with no emissions controls which is highly sought after because they don't break down as often.

imglorp• 7 months ago

Suburban homeowners can use electric blowers. They're good enough now and not silent but way quieter and non-emitting. If you get the mower and trimmer and chainsaw, etc in the same system, they all share batteries. It's SO NICE not having to repair, refuel, tune, and tolerate small engines.

These tools probably aren't ready for professional landscapers yet but they're almost there.

RickJWagner• 7 months ago

You should have seen my 70s era Kawasaki 3 cylinder 500 cc road bike back in the day.

I’m pretty sure the blue cloud that thing belched at startup alone aired more pollution than a weed eater makes all year.

Weight and speed carried more weight than emissions back then. I acknowledge a healthy planet is better, but boy were those bikes fun.

burnt-resistor• 7 months ago

It's a quality-of-life issue (noise pollution), more than anything.

I recall that Palo Alto had this 10-15 years ago and it was somewhat enforced. Although I did see someone put a Honda gas generator on a furniture dolly connected to an electric blower with a 50 or 100 foot extension cord to blow their yard.

meindnoch• 7 months ago

We can make (more or less) silent gas engines for cars. Why can't we make the same for equipment?

pc862• 7 months ago

The top two reasons are increased cost and increased weight. Far, far down the list is slightly decreased reliability.

rickypp• 7 months ago

The muffler in your car weighs a fair bit more than an entire leaf blower. The noise reduction is also aided by enclosing the engine in a compartment with sound deadening, and having 15ft of exhaust piping (and a resonator, and usually multiple catalytic converters). It just can't be done effectively for small engine tools that you have to physically carry around.

2 stroke engines are even worse (chainsaws, weed wackers) because the exhaust has to be tuned for resonance at specific frequencies in order for the engine to make power.

As an owner of some land and many pieces of small engine equipment, I will say that the difference between _no muffler_ and the little mufflers they typically have is still substantial.

bluGill7• 7 months ago

We can, but size and weight are important for hand held equipment and so we sacrifice noise and pollution to meet the other requirements.

TheAtomic• 7 months ago

Please god let this catch on everywhere

analogpixel2• 7 months ago

Next up ban every car that has modified their exhaust to sound like a leaf blower.

cramcgrab• 7 months ago

Portland is the best! Now if they can ban gas cars that would be great!

faidit• 7 months ago

Good. I don't mind the noise since it happens during daytime. Put on headphones and lock in or something. But it's impossible to get good air quality during the day with them running nearby constantly. Always smelling the gas and thinking about the CO content and other toxins you're inhaling. Thus having to shut the windows and watch your CO2 levels rise, knowing it's degrading your mental acuity while you're trying to code..

josefritzishere• 7 months ago

Does no one else just mow the leaves?

gwbas1c• 7 months ago

I bought my corded electric leaf blower about 10 years ago, before battery leaf blowers were reasonably priced and light enough to hold.

The irony: I often run my corded electric leaf blower off of my portable generator just so I can check to make sure the darn thing runs.

bob1029• 7 months ago

I live with a national forest literally in my back yard. I've got to deal with more leaves than most people can imagine. I don't own a leaf blower. I use a rake (with my human hands) to get the leaves into the lawn and I'll mulch em down into bits about once a month with a mower. After mulching down the monster pile I'll run the irrigation system to get the microbial activity going. Things break down fast if you can keep em small and wet. Blowing the leaves off the lawn or collecting them for pickup is crazy to me. This stuff is free fertilizer.

The HOA quants who need their lawns immaculate 24/7/365 are neurotic freaks and no law is going to stop them from finding some new way to be obnoxious to those around them. You may one day find yourself wishing for the return of the leaf blower noise if you aren't careful with rules like this.

rimunroe• 7 months ago

I'm in Massachusetts and have been doing the same thing with our lawn in the five years since becoming a homeowner. We rake leaves away from the house a few times in the fall to make our house less attractive to mice and then run the mower around to mulch those piles and whatever else is in the yard. I let the leaves sit where the mower drops them, although I occasionally put the hopper on the mower and collect a few to throw into garden beds to help our plants overwinter. A lot of the trees around our property are oaks, which have leaves which take a while to break down, but when they're cut into tiny bits they seem to go away quickly enough. Overall it's worked quite well. It's low effort and is far less disruptive than blowing leaves around, especially with an electric mower.

Portland's gas-powered leaf blower ban goes into effect

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