#leafblowers — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #leafblowers, aggregated by home.social.
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#PlasticPatrol: the #CitizenScientists tackling #litter in #Australian #waterways
#Plastics make up the majority of litter across the country. In the absence of regulation, the public are taking matters into their own hands
by James Norman, Fri 30 Jan 2026
"Neil Blake weighs a paper bag of fake grass fragments he has collected from a stormwater gutter near #DarebinCreek in #Melbourne’s north.
"Over the past three years Blake has conducted 56 collections of synthetic turf in the waterway alongside the KP Hardiman Reserve hockey pitch.
" 'I noticed that a local hockey pitch was being replaced and the plastic surface was running off into the local environment,' he says. Strong northerly winds and #LeafBlowers had helped shed the turf fragments into the local #environment.
"In addition to impacts on #AquaticEcosystems, scientific analysis suggests #PlasticPollution is exacerbating #ClimateChange, #biodiversity loss and #OceanAcidification.
"Australians produce more than 3m tonnes of plastic waste each year, and according to Clean Up’s annual survey of parks, beaches, creeks and other public spaces, plastics make up more than 80% of litter across the country. A review by the New South Wales chief scientist found that one #SyntheticTurf field could transport between 10kg and 100kg of plastic fragments into the #stormwater system or local waterways.
"Blake has taken advantage of the electronic scales provided by the newly opened community science laboratory in the Port Phillip #EcoCentre in #StKilda, to quantify his samples to present to the local council and the Environment Protection Authority. The lab hosts facilities including microscopes, measuring equipment, safety gear and access to advice from trained scientists.
"It’s one example of citizen scientists tackling the growing problem of plastics in #waterways, including #beaches, #rivers and dive sites around the country."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/okVtk#SolarPunkSunday #LitterCleanup #NewSouthWales #Australia #PlasticTurf #PlasticPollution #CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #Astroturf #PlasticPollution #Microplastics
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#PlasticPatrol: the #CitizenScientists tackling #litter in #Australian #waterways
#Plastics make up the majority of litter across the country. In the absence of regulation, the public are taking matters into their own hands
by James Norman, Fri 30 Jan 2026
"Neil Blake weighs a paper bag of fake grass fragments he has collected from a stormwater gutter near #DarebinCreek in #Melbourne’s north.
"Over the past three years Blake has conducted 56 collections of synthetic turf in the waterway alongside the KP Hardiman Reserve hockey pitch.
" 'I noticed that a local hockey pitch was being replaced and the plastic surface was running off into the local environment,' he says. Strong northerly winds and #LeafBlowers had helped shed the turf fragments into the local #environment.
"In addition to impacts on #AquaticEcosystems, scientific analysis suggests #PlasticPollution is exacerbating #ClimateChange, #biodiversity loss and #OceanAcidification.
"Australians produce more than 3m tonnes of plastic waste each year, and according to Clean Up’s annual survey of parks, beaches, creeks and other public spaces, plastics make up more than 80% of litter across the country. A review by the New South Wales chief scientist found that one #SyntheticTurf field could transport between 10kg and 100kg of plastic fragments into the #stormwater system or local waterways.
"Blake has taken advantage of the electronic scales provided by the newly opened community science laboratory in the Port Phillip #EcoCentre in #StKilda, to quantify his samples to present to the local council and the Environment Protection Authority. The lab hosts facilities including microscopes, measuring equipment, safety gear and access to advice from trained scientists.
"It’s one example of citizen scientists tackling the growing problem of plastics in #waterways, including #beaches, #rivers and dive sites around the country."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/okVtk#SolarPunkSunday #LitterCleanup #NewSouthWales #Australia #PlasticTurf #PlasticPollution #CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #Astroturf #PlasticPollution #Microplastics
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#PlasticPatrol: the #CitizenScientists tackling #litter in #Australian #waterways
#Plastics make up the majority of litter across the country. In the absence of regulation, the public are taking matters into their own hands
by James Norman, Fri 30 Jan 2026
"Neil Blake weighs a paper bag of fake grass fragments he has collected from a stormwater gutter near #DarebinCreek in #Melbourne’s north.
"Over the past three years Blake has conducted 56 collections of synthetic turf in the waterway alongside the KP Hardiman Reserve hockey pitch.
" 'I noticed that a local hockey pitch was being replaced and the plastic surface was running off into the local environment,' he says. Strong northerly winds and #LeafBlowers had helped shed the turf fragments into the local #environment.
"In addition to impacts on #AquaticEcosystems, scientific analysis suggests #PlasticPollution is exacerbating #ClimateChange, #biodiversity loss and #OceanAcidification.
"Australians produce more than 3m tonnes of plastic waste each year, and according to Clean Up’s annual survey of parks, beaches, creeks and other public spaces, plastics make up more than 80% of litter across the country. A review by the New South Wales chief scientist found that one #SyntheticTurf field could transport between 10kg and 100kg of plastic fragments into the #stormwater system or local waterways.
"Blake has taken advantage of the electronic scales provided by the newly opened community science laboratory in the Port Phillip #EcoCentre in #StKilda, to quantify his samples to present to the local council and the Environment Protection Authority. The lab hosts facilities including microscopes, measuring equipment, safety gear and access to advice from trained scientists.
"It’s one example of citizen scientists tackling the growing problem of plastics in #waterways, including #beaches, #rivers and dive sites around the country."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/okVtk#SolarPunkSunday #LitterCleanup #NewSouthWales #Australia #PlasticTurf #PlasticPollution #CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #Astroturf #PlasticPollution #Microplastics
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#PlasticPatrol: the #CitizenScientists tackling #litter in #Australian #waterways
#Plastics make up the majority of litter across the country. In the absence of regulation, the public are taking matters into their own hands
by James Norman, Fri 30 Jan 2026
"Neil Blake weighs a paper bag of fake grass fragments he has collected from a stormwater gutter near #DarebinCreek in #Melbourne’s north.
"Over the past three years Blake has conducted 56 collections of synthetic turf in the waterway alongside the KP Hardiman Reserve hockey pitch.
" 'I noticed that a local hockey pitch was being replaced and the plastic surface was running off into the local environment,' he says. Strong northerly winds and #LeafBlowers had helped shed the turf fragments into the local #environment.
"In addition to impacts on #AquaticEcosystems, scientific analysis suggests #PlasticPollution is exacerbating #ClimateChange, #biodiversity loss and #OceanAcidification.
"Australians produce more than 3m tonnes of plastic waste each year, and according to Clean Up’s annual survey of parks, beaches, creeks and other public spaces, plastics make up more than 80% of litter across the country. A review by the New South Wales chief scientist found that one #SyntheticTurf field could transport between 10kg and 100kg of plastic fragments into the #stormwater system or local waterways.
"Blake has taken advantage of the electronic scales provided by the newly opened community science laboratory in the Port Phillip #EcoCentre in #StKilda, to quantify his samples to present to the local council and the Environment Protection Authority. The lab hosts facilities including microscopes, measuring equipment, safety gear and access to advice from trained scientists.
"It’s one example of citizen scientists tackling the growing problem of plastics in #waterways, including #beaches, #rivers and dive sites around the country."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/okVtk#SolarPunkSunday #LitterCleanup #NewSouthWales #Australia #PlasticTurf #PlasticPollution #CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #Astroturf #PlasticPollution #Microplastics
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#PlasticPatrol: the #CitizenScientists tackling #litter in #Australian #waterways
#Plastics make up the majority of litter across the country. In the absence of regulation, the public are taking matters into their own hands
by James Norman, Fri 30 Jan 2026
"Neil Blake weighs a paper bag of fake grass fragments he has collected from a stormwater gutter near #DarebinCreek in #Melbourne’s north.
"Over the past three years Blake has conducted 56 collections of synthetic turf in the waterway alongside the KP Hardiman Reserve hockey pitch.
" 'I noticed that a local hockey pitch was being replaced and the plastic surface was running off into the local environment,' he says. Strong northerly winds and #LeafBlowers had helped shed the turf fragments into the local #environment.
"In addition to impacts on #AquaticEcosystems, scientific analysis suggests #PlasticPollution is exacerbating #ClimateChange, #biodiversity loss and #OceanAcidification.
"Australians produce more than 3m tonnes of plastic waste each year, and according to Clean Up’s annual survey of parks, beaches, creeks and other public spaces, plastics make up more than 80% of litter across the country. A review by the New South Wales chief scientist found that one #SyntheticTurf field could transport between 10kg and 100kg of plastic fragments into the #stormwater system or local waterways.
"Blake has taken advantage of the electronic scales provided by the newly opened community science laboratory in the Port Phillip #EcoCentre in #StKilda, to quantify his samples to present to the local council and the Environment Protection Authority. The lab hosts facilities including microscopes, measuring equipment, safety gear and access to advice from trained scientists.
"It’s one example of citizen scientists tackling the growing problem of plastics in #waterways, including #beaches, #rivers and dive sites around the country."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/okVtk#SolarPunkSunday #LitterCleanup #NewSouthWales #Australia #PlasticTurf #PlasticPollution #CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #Astroturf #PlasticPollution #Microplastics
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In Australia the holiday season is the season to use petrol gardening equipment all day, every day. Pythons, lizards, frogs and insects are simply shredded and mulched alive.
Robotic lawn mowers and fossil fuel gardening tools are shredding wildlife
"Scientists analyzed 370 documented cases of hedgehogs being injured (cut) by electric gardening tools in Germany. Almost half of the hedgehogs found ... did not survive the injuries. The data reveal a serious animal welfare and conservation issue for these specially protected animals, as most hedgehogs were only found hours or even days after the accidents." >>
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240123122229.htm#biodiversity #wildlife #conservation #lawns #gardens #GardeningTools #robots #LawnMowing #machines #harm #gardening #WhipperSnipper #LeafBlowers #mowers #FossilFuel #RoboticMowers #GardeningEquipment #PlasticNetting
Image: Bracca matutinata (Southern Bracca), Bellingen, NSW
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i hope the inventors of #leafblowers rott in the dungeons of an #icemoonprison somewhere :skelethor: :molotov: :guillotine:
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The Virginia General Assembly is now past the halfway mark of its first session under Democratic control since the 2021 session, and I have to admit that I expected a little more out of my state’s legislature now that Republicans can’t quietly sink decent bills in committees as they did in the House of Delegates in the previous two-year session.
It’s not that the Western Hemisphere’s oldest continuous law-making body–I can’t write that without noting that for the first time in its 405-year history, the House is led by a Black man, Speaker Don Scott (D.-Portsmouth)–has been spinning its wheels in this session. As of Tuesday’s “crossover day,” the deadline for each chamber to pass any non-budget bill that the other may consider, more than a thousand bills have survived that deadline in our state’s unusually short legislative session.
They include a raft of gun-control measures, some of which attracted Republican votes and may escape a veto from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), as well as various bills to protect Virginians from the enforcement of abortion bans (you can also think of them as forced-birth laws) in other states.
Other accomplishments by either house, in some cases by both, haven’t landed in as many headlines but deserve some recognition: streamlining rural broadband buildout, ending legacy admissions to public colleges and universities, banning unadvertised junk fees, extending health care to undocumented immigrant children, and legalizing the customary cyclist practice of treating stop signs without crossing traffic as yield signs.
I also appreciate how the General Assembly hasn’t rubber-stamped Youngkin’s ploy to help the Washington Capitals and Wizards move to Alexandria’s Potomac Yards neighborhood. That arena belongs in downtown D.C. on top of multiple Metro lines.
And yet the General Assembly has still missed major opportunities–even setting aside Dems postponing votes for constitutional amendments to end felony disenfranchisement and protect same-sex marriage and abortion rights until next year’s session.
(Constituional amendments must pass in separate General Assembly sessions before going to a popular vote, so I can understand how timing them for the same year as legislative elections makes them more obvious campaign issues.)
In particular, it’s disgraceful how often Democrats have quietly sunk decent bills in committees that would have put some limits on the ability of people and even companies to throw money at politicians. Virginia’s lax campaign-finance laws amount to legalized bribery of candidates and elected officials, and Dems in Richmond should be embarrassed to have done so little to fix that. Again.
On a lesser and more local level, I’m also annoyed that a measure to allow municipalities to ban noisy and polluting gas-powered leaf blowers got punted to next year’s session. Related: It’s still dumb how often cities and counties have to get a permission slip from Richmond to do things that would have little to no effect on their neighbors.
And then there are the cases where legislators didn’t even introduce bills that should have had a chance of passing. For example, four years after we couldn’t finish an anti-SLAPP bill to close Virginia to libel tourists, nobody tried to introduce one this year. And a year after a bill to restore direct online filing of state taxes got quashed in a House committee, nobody tried to fix that either.
I’ll be thinking about that last failure when I once again file our state taxes on paper. And when I vote this fall–as I will and as I always do, because I’ve already seen how much my state has changed, one election at a time. And because however grumpy I might get about one season’s legislative results, I’m not going to practice childlike citizenship by holding my voting breath until other people do the work.
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/02/16/progress-in-virginia-still-demands-some-patience/
#antiSLAPP #campaignFinance #crossoverDay #directTaxPrep #GlennYoungkin #HouseOfDelegates #leafBlowers #Richmond #VirginiaDemocrats #VirginiaGeneralAssembly #VirginiaIFile #VirginiaSenate
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The Benefits of Untidy Gardens ... some thoughts on the advantages of scruffiness for garden wildlife.
https://richardgregson.ca/2023/03/29/the-benefits-of-untidy-gardens/
#Gardens #Wildlifegardens #Montreal #Leaflitter #Birds #leafblowers #spring