The world was a nicer place before the advent of leaf blowers

The world will be better when people will stop following the medieval trend of having a lawn. Water consumption, leaf blowers, habitat invasion would be finally gone.

As a scandinavian I never got what the deal is. Just let it decompose? Or use a rake, it's not that hard.
Then I visited Texas, and leafblowers were everywhere to the point where I had to ask a coworker "why do you guys hate leaves so much?"
- It goes against the perfect manicured lawn narrative.
  
  And perfect lawns are horrible for the environment!
- Idk I find using a rake is actually pretty hard
  My property has dozens and dozens of trees, many of which are big leaf maples, it’s sweaty physical work that lasts months and months to keep up, the rainy months too, and if I don’t keep up my house gets overtaken by the forest

It sounds like a very American problem. I just let the leaves rot away on their own really, maybe sweep the path by my house and they can sit on a garden bed around some plants and rot down there.
- I live in South America, it's not, every groundskeeper in my medium-income condo neighborhood has one, and makes working from home really difficult, specially in the summer when you want to open a window
- Somewhat. Mostly because you have a lot of suburban people in America who like manicured lawns and expect you to do the same. Even without an HOA, you still have people calling the city if your lawn gets too out of sorts.
  In the documentary "The Power Of Nightmares", it's mentioned that Sayyid Qutb (an Egyptian political theorist who's ideas directly influenced Osama Bin Laden) saw Americans being overly concerned with lawncare as a decadent and repulsive thing. I can't say he's wrong. He wasn't even around to see what TruGreen does to things. It should be noted, too, that his criticism wasn't from afar. He spent two years as a student in the US after WWII, and he didn't come away liking the place.
  
  I live in the UK and as long as my lawn isn't blocking out the sun or causing an actual health risk to people I can pretty much do what ever I like with it. I am thinking of aim for wildflower meadow.

Gas ones are banned in my town starting June 1st. Going to be reporting so many people.
- Luckily I own a battery powered one owned by a giant multinational gas company (Ego/Chevron)!
  
  Or you could just use a leaf rake.

I'm Brazilian. As one can imagine, we do have a lot of leaves, being a tropical country and all.
I have not seen a leaf blower in my entire life, and I don't understand the obsession with them.
- Being in a tropical country, I imagine most/all of your trees are non-deciduous, as in they don't lose all their leaves in autumn and then regrow in the spring? Imagine all the leaves drying up, falling off, and the mess is left all over the ground. Cleanup is a laborious effort. Leaf blowers speed up the process by blowing the leaves from trafficked locations and/or to more centralized locations that are easier to clean the debris. Helpful, noisy, and often environmentally unfriendly.
  
  You're correct about most trees not following your typical seasonal variance.
  You're incorrect about this meaning we don't deal with significant amounts of leaves and flowers. Search for Handroanthus images, then imagine one on each sidewalk, and imagine all their flowers on the ground.
  
  The massive jacaranda mimosifolia (native to Brazil) which is dominating my front garden, laughs at your suggestion that it does not leave much mess on the ground.
  It regularly carpets the area below it in purple flowers, tens of thousands of small leaves, hundreds of twigs/seed pods and a few larger dried branches. Not just one season either - it flowers multiple times a year with how weird the weather is nowadays. The birds and bees like it though so we're cool.
  
  I live in the UK, I have never had an issue with leaves beyond a brief sweep of the main pathway.
- I envy you. They are the bane of my existence. I have 4 neighbors that use them for landscaping once a week, most of the year. As for the appeal: you ever see a kid use a straw to blow stuff around? My theory is leaf blowers are an extension of that curiosity. A toy, really. When I hear someone rationalizing their use of a leaf blower, I hear someone talking about a toy they like. nevermind all the times i hear folks revving them like they're on a motorcycle.

I sleep with earplugs in because I work nights and have no idea when the HOA maintenance people are going to start blowing those things at 8 in the fucking morning.

Echoing a handful of comments in this thread, I'm from Argentina and I've seen maybe one leaf blower in my entire lifetime. However, I've been to the US , so I believe you (my condolences)
If my understanding is correct, leaf blowers contribute a lot to the current massive bug die-off that's been happening lately all over, because many bug species reproduce in leaf litter. In that regard, they're not only terrible noise-wise, but ecologically-wise as well.
So, terrible all around.

I get a lot of leaves. I have a battery powered 60v leaf blower. I blow them away from my foundation so I don’t get a rotting mound around my house. Then I have to blow those away or they won’t biodegrade without leaving giant dirt patches. What I’ve found works well is blowing them into the forest bed at the edge of my property. The deer and other animals seem to help break them down. I don’t have to worry about them until fall but there are just too many to leave lie where they land. I go through three batteries a day over the course of weeks to keep them from building up really bad. I’m not a mow every week manicured lawn kind of person either. Right now most of my back yard is over a foot tall with a mowed area for my small dog.
I also like the leaf blower for cleaning off my gutter guards, drive, lawn mower, garage floor, deck, and even when it’s just a light snow I’ll go out a few times to blow everything off so I don’t have to shovel.
- Is that really so much easier than raking?
  
  Yes.

I had a neighbor who was rather compulsive about her yard. She would mow her yard/have it mowed 2-3 times a week and would use a leaf blower to push the grass clippings onto her neighbors yard every time. She would also leaf blow her roof with surprising frequency.
I gotta say, I was a little relieved when I saw the for sale sign in the yard earlier this year.

I agree that overuse of them is an issue, but damn they come in handy more than I thought it would... Mine is at least electric, and cleaning out dusty stuff (fans, cars, rugs, etc) is so quick and easy... I almost never use mine for grass or leaves.
- Yeah! Clean the coils onthe fridge fast and easy. (Open windows first. Close cupboard doors.)
  
  Oof, I’d go shop vac there. You’re just spreading it around, no?
- If on the scale of annoyance gas leaf blowers are 10/10, electric are 3/10.
- Ditto. Primarily mine is used to "sweep" the shop and dry off motorcycles after washing.
- Have you ever used one to stoke a fire?
  
  Or bring a woman to orgasm?
  
  Honestly this is a reason I would kinda like to have one. But I do have a 500w electric blower for cleaning dust from my PC. Have thought of using that to help get the BBQ going real hot sometime if I get an extension lead for it.
  How would you like your steak? I can apply it directly to the coals anywhere from orange to white hot.

The answer to the world's problems ..... remove leaf blowers
- you jest, but children around the world are no longer starving thanks to this post.
  
  you jest, but various pollinators depend on leaf coverage for winter protection. Fewer pollinators does result in less food...

You know, I was just— bbbrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
- Your comment blows, dude...

Leaf blowers piss me the fuck offffff VvRrrmmmm Five seconds later… VRRRMMMMMM Sound gets closer… VRRRRRrrrMmmmmmMMMMM!!!

Wouldn't a goat be a cheaper and less polluting solution which would also automatically mow the lawn and produce milk..?
(Of course it wouldn't solve the noise problem, but it'd probably be less offensive than a leaf blower...)
- You think that right up until you see and smell how much poop comes from one cow/goat/sheep. If your neighbor had one, you would have complaints.

Theyre banning them where I live. Good riddance.
- My town banned landscaping companies from using them, but enforcement is non-existent. More often than not, the person operating it doesn't speak English, so I can't even explain why I would like them to stop.
- Even battery powered ones? I’d only heard of bans on gas ones.

Relevant podcast episode. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-los-angeles-leaf-blower-wars/
- Good episode for sure. Well... most 99% Invisible episodes are good!

I always think about something along these lines about cars.

They were invented in the 1950s.
So the Depression and the World Wars were quieter....
- I was also invented in the 1950s, and you did not start to see them until the 70s or 80s.
  
  I was also invented in the 1950s,
  https://youtu.be/iFgqgMreCAQ
  As were many other horrors...

Blowers should be illegal.
- Gas powered high volume blowers, yes.
  Electric ones aren't so bad.
  
  They're still unnecessary and enviriomentally harmful.
  
  Maybe, but the hardware battery pack industrial complex needs to be regulated as well. So much e-waste and batteries use in most contexts where an extension cable is more suitable.

we are blessed here to have the noise in the winter, too. more than three flakes of snow and there's sure to be a legion of leaf blowers clearing off precious pavement in neighborhoods all over town. the guys that do it at 4-5am are the true treasures.

am i the baddie?

My grandfather got in a minor disagreement with his neighbor one time. Shortly after I went to his house to visit and saw his neighbor on the roof blowing leaves off his roof on to my grandfather's lawn.🤣

Can't even jump in big piles of leaves anymore cuz they just blow them away 😩

I use mine to clear grass from the driveways (my neighbors more than mine since I don't care that much) and to blow leaves out of my gutters. As for blowing an entire yard full of leaves into neat little piles, hell no!. I've got better things to do with my time. I just keep mulching blades on my mower and grind the leaves up. Better for the lawn anyway.

...and also stop using it when a car is passing by. Thanks assholes

I'm always taken aback by the hate. Where and how do you guys live that this is an issue?! Let alone a major annoyance?! I can scarcely imagine noticing leaf blower noise. It's no worse than gas mowers and those are everywhere (or used to be), and go for far longer. Is this just a circle-jerk complaint kinda thing?
I know everyone around here thinks they're an ADHD, autistic, OCD mess, but can no one tune out background noise? (No, you're not special, more likely an normal adult human with modern life issues.) If anything it should be old people bitching as hearing discretion gets more difficult in middle-age+.
The homeless guy that lives behind our Lowe's probably gets annoyed at the 9PM blowing, but that's a 20-30 minute thing, and not too late. (Always felt a bit bad when I closed.) I pick every tiny bit of plastic out though. Not in my waterways!
A bit snarky, I know, but those were serious questions.
And BTW, organic refuse gets blown in the street because passing vehicles reduce it to dust very quickly. All organic, no harm no foul in my book. Also, it's hellacious to corral that stuff for sweeping, no point.
EDIT: This post reminded me I need a new battery blower. And if you think 5-minutes of noise while I blow out my truck bed and driveway is too much, I don't know what to tell you.
- They're loud, they kick up dust, and they happen at intermittent times based on when the neighbors do it. they also use fossil fuels. Loud mowers are annoying, too! If you -- heaven forbid -- want to keep your windows open and feel a breeze, you're going to get all of that noise and maybe even some of the dust.
  I understand that we have to clear sidewalks and driveways so that accidents don't happen. People usually don't have so much sidewalk + driveway that a broom or something wouldn't do that job quickly. But then we have to blow the leaves off the lawn, too? I know that your HOA will kill you if you don't, but doesn't it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer, when the leaves would have biodegraded into new topsoil? To spend so much time watering a lawn to keep it alive when the leaves would have shielded it from the sun? Why are we spending so much time, money, water, and effort to maintain sterile grass lawns? We can have beautiful outdoors spaces without being slaves to an HOA enforcing what plants we grow.
  I understand that it's really the HOAs these days that are a big part of the problem. A good number of people in my HOA-less neighborhood have diverse plants in front of their homes. They look fantastic, they seem to take way less maintenance (I never see them mowing, watering, weeding, fertilizing, etc), and ofc they're much better for the environment.
  
  So, again, what sort of space do you live in where this is annoyance? I'm only aware of leaf blowers when I'm driving and a lawn service is blowing.
  Who's complaining is my question. People in nice hoods with the neighbors going nuts? Apartment complexes? Is this an autumn thing where leaves fall everywhere?
  
  doesn’t it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer
  I think you are imagining leaves from small and widely spaced trees. We do not put down fertilizer, but we remove leaves from the part of our yard we want to include grass. The parts of the yard we let the leaves stay kills all the grass (hardier plants grow there, but they are not compatible with mowing to a walk-over height). Leaf mould easily takes two years to create, and grass needs sunlight in a half year from fall. Chopping it up helps, but at the volume created by our over-hundred-year-old oak and several other large trees, even chopped there is just too much mass per lawn area to be able to leave it and not kill the grass.
- I understand your skepticism, but gas-powered leaf blowers have annoyed the hell out of me for years. I live in a relatively small city in Northern California, and I can always hear and smell a leaf blower before I can even see it. I can't overstate how strongly gas-powered leaf blowers smell. The smell of gas permeates my apartment, even with the windows closed, and is the kind of smell that gets stuck my nostrils for hours. The noise is pretty disruptive, but the smell is way worse to be honest. I'm not sure why they smell so much worse than other gas-powered things, but it's like they're just spewing gas out into the air.
  I have no problem with electric or battery-powered leaf blowers, just please use them at a reasonable time of day - after 8am and before 10pm.
  
  Gas powered leaf blowers are small two stroke engines, you’re smelling oil burning (oil is mixed with gasoline to lubricate, it burns by design), and those engines tend to be jetted to run rich so they don’t burn up too quickly.
  Unburned gasoline, unburned oil, burned oil are the extra smells that you don’t get from a lawnmower, which would be four stroke like a car.
  Two strokes are also noisier than four. They fire twice as often as four strokes, and for the purposes of a leaf blower, they also rev higher.
- Maybe it is a hearing difference. I was never into loud music and my hearing is still very good.
- I know everyone around here thinks they're an ADHD, autistic, OCD mess, but can no one tune out background noise?
  Drag is often in physical pain and crying on the floor because of the leaf blower, but sure, autism is fake.

Fuck leaf blowers and whoever invented them. Should be illegal along with ultra bright headlights