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