Parks petition
September 6, 2010 by Kate
Comments (1)
I don't know whether other people have seen this/ know about it, but I thought it might be of interest.
It's a petition to be handed in by a group of London Councillors to Boris Johnson and
the London Assembly this Wednesday (8th).
Many of London's parks and open spaces no longer provide respite from pollution.
Maintenance staff drive around in large trucks and use ear-splitting
power-tools. Worst of these is the leaf-blower used all year round whether
there are leaves or not. They are used by local authorities in housing estates
parks school playgrounds practically everywhere. Research shows the fumes and
dust they emit are dangerous to the public while the air blasts are cruel to
wildlife and damaging to plants.
The petition is calling for these machines to be banned from local authority use
and for petrol trucks and chainsaws to be withdrawn from parks and green spaces.
To view the petition and sign it please Google the Gopetition site and type in
'petrol-free parks' into that site's search engine or at
http:/
|
Russell Miller
Profile
Friends
Friends of
Pages
Files
Blog
This is very interesting and timely. The plague of petrol leaf blowers is an appalling intrusion into peaceful park environments. I completely agree leaf blowers should be banned. Unfortunately increasing use of carbon fuelled machinery goes hand in hand with staff cuts. Few gardeners and rangers, more, bigger machines.
I have not yet signed the petition because I think it is a bit unrealistic and counter productive to call for ALL petrol machinery to be banned from parks. Grass cutting operations could be greatly reduced with benefits to biodiversity but some mowing and tree maintenance without power tools is not realistic and asking for the impossible rather discredits the more achievable aim of prohibiting leaf blowers.
Russell Miller 517 days ago