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    5 Green Reasons to Choose Battery-Powered Lawn Tools

    Cordless electric mowers, string trimmers, and leaf blowers now perform better than ever. And compared with gas-powered options, they're kinder to the environment, too.

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    Stripes and battery icon mowed into lawn with a person and mower
    A battery-charged mower gets the job done efficiently, in more ways than one.
    Photo Illustration: Tim LaPalme/Consumer Reports, iStock

    The irony of lawn tools is that they’re often destroying the same outdoor spaces we are hoping to maintain and manicure. That’s because some of them are causing more harm to the environment than many people realize.

    Gas-powered outdoor equipment, including leaf blowers and lawn mowers, emit an outsized share of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

    There are 650 million gas-powered outdoor tools currently in use in the U.S., according to a 2021 study from The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com. And each one contributes to climate change.

    “When you look nationally at the pollution from gas-powered yard tools, the numbers are pretty staggering,” says Simon Mui, PhD, director of the Clean Vehicles & Fuels Group, part of the Climate & Clean Energy Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These little lawn tools with two-stroke engines are, in some cases, putting out 20 to nearly 300 times the emissions of a car every hour they’re running.” (Two-stroke engines are commonly used in handheld lawn tools like chainsaws and string trimmers; these are even less efficient than the four-stroke engines used in gas tools with wheels, like lawn mowers and snow blowers.)

    Lawn tools with a two-stroke engine can spew 20 to nearly 300 times the emissions of a car.

    Source: Simon Mui/Natural Resources Defense Council.

    Fortunately, battery-powered models are now a truly viable option. “Every year we test more battery tools, and every year we find fewer reasons to recommend buying gas tools,” says Misha Kollontai, the CR engineer who oversees the testing of all outdoor power equipment.

    More on Battery-Powered Lawn Tools

    The battery-lawn-tool revolution began with string trimmers and leaf blowers. These tools require less power than, say, a lawn mower or chainsaw, and so they’re easier to power with batteries. But now, thanks to breakthroughs in battery capacity, along with improved efficiencies in motors, even large, power-hungry tools have gone electric.

    For the past several years, companies have been paying much closer attention to cordless outdoor power. At Ryobi, for instance, cordless products have become the "main focus" of the product-development team," says Steve Holland, executive vice president of product management at TTI, the brand’s parent company.

    In 2017 we reported on the first battery push mower in our tests that could truly compete with gas models. And in 2021, we tested two compact two-stage battery snow blowers, one from Ego and one from Snow Joe. Both scored well enough for CR to recommend them, and both beat out a number of gas models in a head-to-head matchup.

    But the improved performance of battery-powered lawn tools is just one selling point. Even more compelling is that they’re less harmful to the environment. Here are five eco-friendly reasons to choose cordless electric power tools over gas.

    1. A Battery-Powered Motor Produces Zero Emissions

    That stands in stark contrast to the two-stroke engines that power many gas tools. These gas tools not only pollute but also are dirtier than car engines. That’s because they’re far less efficient and don’t have the emissions-capturing technology that regulations have made standard in the auto industry.

    Consider this: Running a commercial gas-powered leaf blower for just an hour produces about as much pollution as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry 1,100 miles, according to the California Air Resources Board.

    Running a commercial leaf blower for an hour can produce as many pollutants as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry 1,100 miles.

    Source: California Air Resources Board.

    2. Battery-Powered Tools Are More Efficient

    Because electric motors are typically more efficient than gas engines, they require less energy input to do the same amount of work. Gasoline engines generate a significant amount of heat during the combustion phase, which is just wasted energy. Electric motors don’t typically have the same waste-heat problem as gasoline engines, so more of the energy they generate goes directly toward powering the tool.

    3. You Can Recharge Them

    Any form of energy comes at some cost to the environment. The lithium-ion batteries that power these lawn tools need to be recharged with electricity, so they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions indirectly by taking energy generated by power plants.

    “But it’s a fraction of the harmful emissions produced by running gas tools,” Mui says.

    And if your utility company relies in part on renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, the carbon footprint of using your electric tool gets even smaller.

    You can find out where your area stands by entering your ZIP code into the EPA’s Power Profiler to see how much of the energy you use is generated by oil, natural gas, and renewable sources.

    One side note: If you purchase multiple tools from the same manufacturer platform, you can use one battery interchangeably for all of them. And for each tool you purchase without a battery, you pay around 30 percent less.

    4. There’s No Risk of Spilled Gasoline

    It’s almost inevitable that you’ll spill a few drops of gas when refilling the tank of a lawn mower or string trimmer, or when filling up a container at a gas station.

    That’s because when you’re filling a gas container, a gas pump’s shutoff mechanism doesn’t activate the way it does when you’re filling your car’s tank. So you’re more likely to overfill your container. “That spilled gasoline can contaminate groundwater and aquatic systems, potentially exposing people to dangerous hydrocarbons like benzene and toluene,” says Andrew Zimmerman, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Florida.

    And while your small spill may seem like no big deal, consider that you’re one of millions of people making that mistake. “If you added up all the spilled fuel across the country each year,” Mui says, “you’d probably end up with something that resembled a large-scale oil spill.”

    Accidental spills from refueling the gas lawn tools currently in use in the U.S. add up—to the point where they're comparable to a large oil spill each year.

    Source: Simon Mui/Natural Resources Defense Council.

    5. Battery-Powered Tools Are More Reliable Than You Might Think

    At CR we regularly conduct member surveys in which we ask our members to tell us about problems they experienced with their outdoor power equipment. We use that data to estimate how reliable newly purchased tools will be through the fourth or fifth year of ownership. The more reliable the tool, the less likely it will quickly end up in a landfill.

    What we discovered: Battery-charged trimmers and leaf blowers turn out to be more reliable than gas ones. For instance, almost all the battery string-trimmer brands we test earn a favorable rating or above for predicted reliability, while less than half of the gas brands we rate score as well. As for leaf blowers, most handheld battery-powered brands earn a favorable or very favorable reliability rating. No handheld gas brand earns more than a midlevel reliability rating. In fact, a majority of brands warrant unfavorable or very unfavorable ratings.

    We see more variability with battery-charged lawn mowers, but almost all of the cordless electric mower brands for which we have adequate data earn a midlevel rating or better—and a handful of brands earn top-level or near top-level ratings. Most gas mower brands are also rated midlevel or better, but there are more gas brands that do not receive acceptable reliability ratings.

    Overall, as battery-powered lawn tools of all kinds have improved, so have their warranties. Many brands have started offering lengthier warranties of two or three years as opposed to one year, which was pretty standard when battery tools first came out. So when a problem arises with a battery-powered lawn tool, it may be easier to have it fixed than in the past, as opposed to throwing it out. That’s good for the earth and for your wallet, too.

    5 Standout Battery-Powered Lawn Tools

    You can count on the lawn mower, string trimmer, leaf blower, chainsaw, and snow blower below to provide terrific performance while producing zero emissions as you tackle your yardwork.


    Paul Hope

    Paul Hope is a Home & DIY Editor at Consumer Reports and a trained chef. He covers ranges, cooktops, and wall ovens, as well as grills, drills, outdoor power tools, decking, and wood stains. Before joining CR in 2016, he tested kitchen products at Good Housekeeping and covered tools and remodeling for This Old House magazine. You’ll typically find him in his old fixer-upper, engrossed in a DIY project or trying out a new recipe.