Here’s Why You Should Make the Switch to Electric Lawn Tools
By: John Garcia | Date Posted: August 24, 2022
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Electric lawn mowers and other lawn tools are finally getting to the point where they can hold their own against gas-powered tools – and it’s time to think about making the switch. While you might still need the power and longevity of gas if you’re a professional landscaper, electric lawn tools are becoming the better option for homeowners with less than an acre or two to maintain.
Electric tools have a number of benefits over gas tools. You don’t have to worry about maintaining a combustion engine, mixing gas and oil together for two-cycle engines, spilling fuel, or polluting the environment. Electric tools are lighter and easier to use, make less noise, and require no maintenance.
Electric Tools Are Lighter and Easier to Use
Cordless electric tools are battery-powered, and today’s lithium batteries are smaller, more efficient, and lighter than ever. That means your average cordless electric lawn mower, for example, will be a lot lighter than a gas mower with a heavy combustion engine. Electric lawn tools like string trimmers and hedge clippers may also weigh less than their gas counterparts.
Electric tools are easier to use, too. Pulling on a starter cord, there’s no need to put your shoulder out of the joint. You can start your electric lawn mower, string trimmer, or chainsaw with the push of a button or the flip of a switch.
You Can Say Goodbye to Spills and Maintenance
Gas-powered tools have combustion engines that have to be maintained. You need to change oil, spark plugs, and filters. There’s a lot that can go wrong with the engine, so repairs are more likely.
You don’t need to do yearly maintenance to an electric tool to keep it in good shape. That means no more oil changes, no more filter changes, and no more spark plugs. It means no more having to dispose of old gas or used oil.
You don’t even have to be doing maintenance on your gas-powered lawn tool to spill gas. You’re likely to spill a little gas every time you fill up your gas can at the pump because most pumps won’t automatically shut off when filling a gas container the way they do when filling a car’s tank. And you’re likely to spill a little more gas when filling up the tank on your gas-powered equipment.
That might not seem like a big deal – how much gas or oil can one person spill, anyway? Well, not that much, but you have to remember that, across the country every summer, millions of people are spilling small amounts of gas and oil in the course of doing maintenance on gas-powered lawn tools or simply filling them up with fuel. The pollution generated each summer by so many people spilling relatively small amounts of fuel and oil is equivalent to an industrial oil spill. That spilled gas and oil leaks into the groundwater, harming aquatic ecosystems and potentially exposing human beings to toxic chemicals like toluene and benzene. You could do your part to protect the environment and your health by switching to cleaner electric lawn tools.
Electric Tools Might Save You Money
Of course, you’ll save money on the gas, oil, spark plugs, and filters needed to operate and maintain gas-powered lawn tools, but that’s not the only way switching to electric lawn tools can be cheaper. The tools themselves are often cheaper than gas-powered equivalents. If you buy tools from the same manufacturer, they will all use the same kind of battery. For example, Ego lawn tools all use the same battery. That means you can buy some of your tools without the battery and save some money. It also means that you can replace batteries as they start to wear out and hold less of a charge. 
There’s No Need to Be So Loud
Want to cut the grass at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday without making your neighbors hate you? Consider an electric lawn mower. The combustion engine generates most of the noise that gas-powered lawn tools and mowers make. Use a tool that doesn’t have a combustion engine, and cut out most of the noise. Electric lawn mowers and other tools are extremely quiet, so you can use them without disturbing the neighbors.
Create Less Pollution
According to Consumer Reports, running a single gas-powered leaf blower for just one hour can create the same volume of carbon emissions as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry 1,100 miles. That’s because small, two- and four-cycle engines aren’t built to the same efficiency standards as automobile emissions, so their emissions are 20 to 300 times those of an automobile. Imagine that level of emissions happening all over the country, hundreds of thousands of thousands of times over, every day in the summer. It’s no wonder climate change is still a problem.
Electric lawn tools, on the other hand, create no emissions. Sure, you have to charge the batteries, and that takes electricity, which might be made using non-renewable fuels. But electric plants tend to generate fewer carbon emissions than small two- and four-cycle gas engines because there are regulations in place to keep power plants from creating pollution. So your rechargeable electric lawn tools will be responsible for far fewer carbon emissions. If your power plant uses wind, solar, or hydroelectric facilities, then that’s even fewer carbon emissions your electric tools will create.
The electric motors on battery-powered lawn tools are much more efficient, too, so they use a lot less energy than gas tools. They can do the same amount of work with much less energy – and they have to because batteries obviously only provide a limited amount of power. Neither are electric tools creating wasted heat energy, like gas motors do during combustion. So more of your electric tool’s power goes toward operating the device.
If you care about the environment and want lighter, easier, quieter, and cleaner lawn tools to use, you should try electric lawn tools. Today’s tools have all the power of gas tools and none of the drawbacks. They’re just what you need to keep your lawn and garden in great shape.
Thank you for reading!
