The Flemish municipality of Knokke will soon ban residents from using two-stroke engine leaf-blowers.
Similarly, the new Flemish government is demanding that 300 Flemish mayors make efforts to replace the use of two-stroke engine leaf-blowers, plant cutters and hedge trimmers, with more environmentally friendly devices, reports Nieuwsblad.
"The technology is simply outdated," said Knokke city maintenance representative, Piet De Groot.
A two-stroke engine is less fuel-efficient than a four-stroke engine, as it mixes together gasoline and oil in the combustion chamber and then spews out as much as one-third of that fuel as an unburned aerosol, reports The Atlantic.
"There are so many disadvantages to two-stroke devices that you cannot describe them as anything other than complete ecological disasters," said lecturer at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, Mark Pecqueur.
“It is very unhealthy to operate such a device, because you are constantly in the polluted exhaust gas. In cities with low emission zones, it is madness that two-stroke devices are still be permitted,” Pecquer added.
Evie McCullough
The Brussels Times
