With the arrival of spring, an all-too-familiar sound winds up. I’m speaking, of course, of the sound of a gas-powered leaf blower held in the hands of a member of the UK groundskeeping staff. All too often I see a worker with such a leaf blower hard at work blowing around clouds of dust with four or five leaves.

This brings the question: Does UK really care about going green? I realize there are leaves still on the ground and I realize UK wants its grounds to look nice, but there are more eco-friendly methods, such as rechargeable electric blowers. Also, we will all see the familiar sight of little gas-powered mowers being used to mow 10 square feet of grass twice a week. This is not an acceptable method of going green. For those small patches of grass, a cordless electric mower would be not only more useful, but easier. I realize that, for large areas of grass, an electric mower is not very useful since it is very time-consuming, but I do not see how UK can justify wasting so much gas on small-area mowing jobs.

Using electric blowers and mowers would really make a statement about going green by cutting fuel costs, oil costs and reducing UK’s carbon footprint.

Benjamin Knuf

international studies senior