Zürich voters ban noisy leaf blowers

[nopelynopington]

I live in a very leafy area with a lot of deciduous forest cover, so we're no stranger to leaves. I have never understood leafblowing. It seems like such busy work. It's not hugely common here but I have seen people carefully shepherding leaves into little piles on pathways, battling against the entropy of a light breeze. I'm sure there's a good reason but it always just seems like the ultimate expression of man trying to conquer nature in every way

[AaronAPU]

Raking requires more back work and they are moving the leaves onto the street for collection.

But some people seem to get obsessed with it and do it almost every day instead of the minimum number of times required to accomplish the purpose.

Around here if you simply let the leaves stay on your lawn you’re going to have a moldy mess and dead grass the next spring.

[easywood]

I live in an neighborhood with a lot of retired people, and I agree with the "busy work" sentiment. As soon as some leaves have fallen, you can hear them firing up their leafblowers. Why? Why not wait until there is a decent amount of leaves and ... use a rake? I really think it's because they don't have anything else to do and it gives them a sense of purpose.

[gutafoki]

I basically live in the forest and get an unreasonable amount of leaves each autumn. Most of these leaves are also from oak and do not decompose well, leaving the lawn a mess in the spring. Using a rake is unreasonable for me, and a leaf blower saves me many, many hours each year that I can spend better elsewhere.

[vel0city]

My main use case for a leaf blower is to blow lawn clippings off the sidewalks, paths, and roads back on to my lawn after mowing and trimming. Rakes aren't effective for such small trimmed parts.

My leaf blower is battery electric though so its a good bit quieter than the gas ones others use, although I do agree its still one of the loudest parts of my yard maintenance.

[blitzar]

They ruin the look of the lawn you have put 1,000 hours of work into this season.

[pjmlp]

Same here, it is crazy around Autum in Germany, I never seen anyone bothering with leaves back in Portugal, and worse many of those leaf blowers are diesel powered, so much for being eco-friendly.

[dzhiurgis]

I agree. Rake is far easier to get bulk amounts in autumn.

Leaf blower is still pretty useful for keeping things tidy, but I’m still embarrassed to use my battery one.

[sonnig]

Are many HN members in Zürich? I was suprised to see this type of news with so many points, though it's quite amusing to see the mixture of different topics in the front page.

[heyyeah]

Yes and I am also surprised to see this news here. (I voted yes to the restriction) We also approved an initiative for cheaper public transport which is cool.

[t8sr]

Zurich and its environs are basically the Bay Area of Europe. Probably explains the huge concentration of HN users.

[integralid]

Zurich is an important city for IT in Europe, and a city I personally like as a visitor.

But that's not it - I find this restriction interesting, and I wanted to learn more. I contrast this with the unrestricted American "freedom to" that I usually see in HN.

[beAbU]

The leafblower is one of those partisan issues where one camp likes to score internet points by joining the chorus against Unpopular Thing even though they have never been impacted by it, and the other camp defending it because their area really gets a lot of leaves compared to the rest, leaves kill their lawns, and brooms/rakes are seemingly ineffective or they don't exist.

[blitzar]

Many live in an HOA in the US - noisy leaf blowers are on the agenda at every meeting.

[Gud]

Zürich has a world class university plus an incredible amount of tech companies.

[loliver666]

I think many HN readers have a sensitivity to noise.

[bob1029]

I moved to a neighborhood where a surprising majority of the residents do not outsource their lawn care and I think this makes the biggest difference. The noise reduction of simply not having beaten up landscaper trucks with muffler deletes driving through the streets every day is a massive help.

Letting your landscapers blow nutrients off your property is insane when it's difficult to find good quality top soil. The stuff you buy at Home Depot is essentially trash and rocks now. What comes out of the mower bag each spring can yield an incredible amount of dirt after it's had a full summer to cook in the pile.

[cafard]

In Washington, DC, gasoline-powered leaf blowers are forbidden. But less than an hour ago, I passed a powerful-looking one ready for use on a lawn nearby.

We finally bought a battery-powered leaf blower. This is really not for the lawn, which is relatively small and easily raked. Rather, my wife likes to remove the leaves from the garden beds. These are difficult to rake, what with shrubs etc., and one generally brings a good deal of mulch along with the leaves. We also have a strip of gravel to one side of the garage, and the blower makes it possible to remove leaves without gravel coming along.

And since you asked, the leaves end up at the curb. The city has a couple of collections every fall.

[beAbU]

Leaves in garden beds keeps moisture in, keeps dust low, help insulate against thermal events, and becomes a good source of nutrients over time.

Is there a reason why your wife wants them removed from the beds? Unless we're talking about an amount of leaves that's endangering the plants there?

[anal_reactor]

I live in the Netherlands. Moved right next to a cycling path that connects my district with the rest of the city. Big mistake - the sound of mopeds is unbearable. On top of that, there are kids who enjoy revving their engines. The sound drives me mad, but for reasons out of scope of this comment I can't move out. Fortunately, the city scheduled a ban on combustion engine mopeds. The problem is that it'll take a few years for the ban to come into force.

Funnily, previously I lived next to a railway and also under fly path of airplanes and these sounds never bothered me. It's the tiny combustion engines that make high-pitched noises that are the worst.

[tasoeur]

Maybe it’s just me but I wonder why western countries don’t implement noise limits for vehicles with sirens in residential areas (fire trucks, police, ambulance etc.). It always felt to me unnecessarily loud.

[1718627440]

I don't now where you live, but there seam to be drastic differences between countries. These vehicle do have an in-city and out-city loudness. Also here they tend to have the siren off most of the time and only turn them on immediately before an intersection.

[apothegm]

They’ve made them louder and louder over the years. That’s because cars have improved soundproofing to keep out the road noise of the tires against asphalt. But that also means it’s harder for drivers to hear sirens. Plus sound systems have gotten louder (in some cases almost drowning out sirens for people outside the vehicle as well as inside!)

TLDR: arms race against audibility for drivers, with residents’ sanity as the casualties.

[gblargg]

Seems like one compromise would be that they can only be used during a few-hour period every other week or so. So you'd only get the noise in a predictable window.

[bsder]

In the US, at least, it doesn't help that almost everyone using leaf blowers are using the cheap, loud, stinky two cycle motor abominations.

Those leaf blowers put more garbage into the air than a car or pickup truck. They're that bad.

[unglaublich]

Why, quiet but capable alternatives exist. Let's stop with all this outdated combustion technology.

[tchalla]

There are noise restrictions and quiet time periods in Zurich

https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/de/stadtleben/veranstaltungen-u...

[izacus]

That's just worse than what got voted in though.

[BSDobelix]

I'd like to add something. The problem is not just the noise. It's also the fine dust concentration.

[pajko]

https://environmentamerica.org/center/articles/leaf-blowers-...

[socalgal2]

Did they ban car alarms?

[croisillon]

20 years ago there was a big gap between Western Europe, mostly no car alarms, and Eastern Europe, car alarms all the time blaring for nothing. Nowadays Eastern Europe turned quieter too. Is it different where you are?

[BSDobelix]

Let's start with banning car's first ;)

[izacus]

I don't think I ever heard one in Zurich.

[beAbU]

I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a car alarm going off for seemingly no reason. I live in a car choked European town.

[4gotunameagain]

It would be nice if we could solve our problems in a nice and civil way, and to be considerate to one another instead of making things illegal.

But then again, we are talking about a country where in many buildings you are not allowed to shower after 9pm.. Or take out the glass to the recycling on sundays..

[unglaublich]

A democratic vote and a clear regulation isn't a "civilized way"?

In a free society, where the default is "allowed", the only lever that you have is restriction.

We can also turn it around, we prohibit everything unless it's explicitly allowed. Then people don't have to complain so much about "too many prohibiting rules".

[scottgg]

The showering thing is an urban legend; you can have landlords try and enforce it, but it infringes on your basic right to enjoy your property iirc and is unenforceable.

The glass thing is accurate tho!

[WesolyKubeczek]

I wish there existed a law that defined a single three-hour or so window of time on Saturday during which you could mow your lawn, and if you do that outside that window, you get sent into a room where you're bombarded with sounds of angry lawnmowers for 96 hours straight.

[pferde]

Cool, now do loud motorbikes in cities. Those things, several times louder than cars, should be illegal anywhere but on isolated highways.

[sschueller]

The laws exist, the issue is enforcement. Usually the police has to first find suspicion, then take your car to a garage and determine with accuracy that it is too loud. Automatic enforcement is coming soon.

Zürich is testing "Lärmeblitzer"[1] which they want to put in certain places where people produce excessive noise with their vehicles. It will take time however as laws need to be changed to allow such devices to issue fines and they need to make sure the false positive rate is low enough.

[1] https://www.20min.ch/story/pilotversuch-wegen-autoposern-sta...

[intsunny]

100000% Agree.

Here in Germany, I'm convinced the Police simply don't care about motorcycles with modified mufflers. The sound is deafening. In the last decade the noise has gotten worse and worse.

Once one of those small penis motorcycle owners saw that I was covering my three year old child's ears as he passed by, and only then did he put his bike into neutral and walked it by us.

[masklinn]

Switzerland has noise ordnances, and like other traffic related offenses they are aggressively enforced.

Aftermarket mods, revving your engine, or late shifting can net you a cool 5 figures fine.

[fsargent]

Already done. Switzerland is a civilised country.

https://lenews.ch/2025/01/17/switzerlands-strict-new-road-no...

[testfrequency]

Congrats!

We have this ban as well in Los Angeles and it’s been lovely, though it’s within 150m of a residential zone.

[Gud]

I love direct democracy.

[thousand_nights]

honestly i don't get the point of leaf blowers, you move the leaves with an extremely loud gasoline powered machine from one place to another

for what purpose, to make it someone else's problem and then they can blow them back?

[lm28469]

It boggles my mind too, I always see these workers blowing leaves for HOURS in my street, you'd be more efficient with a rake, while using 0 gas, and producing 0 noise. Even from the workers perspective, you're just sitting there next to a two stroke engine with no emission filtering the whole day, that can't be good for your lungs. Same thing for removing temporary paint strips or killing weeds, they burn liters of propane slowly moving 50 meters per hour, the best part is that they're often two or three workers per burner, one holding the flamethrower, one pulling the gas tank, one pulling the half melted paint strip. Last time I saw them using a bulldozer to scrape a 10cm wide road paint strip... the amount of energy wasted is insane, we're truly living as if gas was free, unlimited and without side effects

[forgotoldacc]

I always saw people acting like game NPCs blasting a single leaf for what seemed like forever trying to get it into a specific spot.

I'm not convinced leaf blowing is faster than raking. I'm not even convinced it's faster than picking up leaves by hand.

[samuli]

I have been wondering also about this. Why would you use a leaf blower when you can use an electric leaf mulcher, which shreds the leaves, seed and sticks. You can then dispose the leaves in your garden or put it into bio waste.

[integralid]

So you can take them to a bag or trash can and they don't ruin your lawn.

I hated doing this as a kid btw, and it's one of the reasons I don't want a home with a lawn.

[conartist6]

So jealous

[sschueller]

You know that certain breeds are illegal in Switzerland and many Canton require you and your dog to attend mandatory training school?

[herbst]

Loud dogs are not illegal but a valid reason to never got a place to live at again, so it's defacto banned.

Except a very few remote places there is no nightly dog concerts like in our neighbour countries like Italy, France, Austria, ..

[NedF]

> There is also a new restriction for battery-powered models. They may only be used from October to December.

If you want to live in nature and in a city you need the tools to manage it. Cutting the trees down is also a valid solution.

It's the classic arsehole world we have become, people have to be indignant about everything.

For the people who don't create, lazy sloths sitting in their basements, they lash out at those who do.

Trees are a lot of work, when you work in gardening half the time is cleaning (leaf blowing, hedging and mowing) the other half is chopping them down because they are too much work for the owner.

[snackbroken]

People managed to keep trees in cities just fine prior to the mid 20th century so I can't imagine it's an insurmountable obstacle. Beyond cutting the trees down, other valid solutions include (but are not limited to) letting the leaves be on the ground by the tree, using a rake, planting tree species with smaller leaves, or allowing the leaves to be picked up by the regular street cleaning trucks.

Trees are really only a lot of work if you insist on keeping a grotesquely unnatural manicured garden; the only tree I've got that's any significant amount work is an apple tree that would turn half the yard to a rotten apple tripping hazard if you didn't pick them up. A couple more need trimming every few years to keep a path clear, but I would chalk that up to user error in choosing to plant them slightly too close to the path.

Contrary to what the "just tough it out" types would have you believe, noise pollution does cause appreciable harm to public health. Making lots of noise in a dense neighborhood where thousands of people live is just not worth the marginal efficiency improvement of blowing vs raking leaves. Tangentially, this is also one of several reasons why speed limits should be 30km/h in cities to limit rolling noise.

[lelanthran]

You don't need a leaf blower to collect up the leaves in a reasonable time.

We've managed to maintain cities with trees for hundreds of years without leaf blowers, and have owned one I can confirm that it cuts maybe 20% of the time over simply using a rake.

[misja111]

I don't get why you're so upset. Zurich gardeners can still use leaf blowers when leaves are falling, which is between October and December. Only they need to be electric.

The reason is not only environmental, also many people (including myself) were unhappy with the noise of the petrol powered ones. They are very loud, and it seems the typical Zurich neighbor always decides to clean up his garden on a Saturday morning at 7AM.

[Denvercoder9]

> when you work in gardening half the time is cleaning (leaf blowing, hedging and mowing)

How much of this is just to make things look nice, as opposed to actually functional?

[KingOfCoders]

Hundreds of years gardening was done without leaf blowers.

People used rakes.

When you work in gardening, you are paid to do so.

If people in Zürich decide to pay more for gardening and reduce noise, it's their decision.

(though quite frankly, from using a rake myself and watching people here use leaf blowers, I'm not sure they are faster in any way)

[terryf]

Rakes exist you know - we use those for our yard. It's not that hard really.

[beeforpork]

> It's the classic arsehole world we have become, people have to be indignant about everything.

They always have been. But this is not a case of that. Leaf blowers are loud and disperse dog poop. It's disgusting. Use a broom instead.

[sschueller]

We had weekly leaf blowing outside our office regardless if it was raining or not by the management staff of other buildings. If you don't pick up what you blew away what is the point? It got really out of hand.

[saubeidl]

Have you ever heard about rakes?

[naldb]

No, this is democracy in action. People don’t want noise. Antisocial characters will have to deal with it.