[toast0]

> And it serves no ecological purpose.

At least from my experience, it's not done for ecological purposes. It's primarialy done to clear pathways for safety, maintenance, and aesthetics.

Some people do blow a whole lawn, but that never struck me as useful. Cleaning up the path is nice though, and depending on your paths, makes plenty of noise already.

[alistairSH]

Safety on paths makes sense, but in many neighborhoods, that’s doable with a rake in a few minutes vs an hour to do the lawn with a blower.

My neighborhood has a landscape crew do the leaves in the common areas 3x season. If we just had them do the paths and parking lot, it would be half the time (or less) with blowers.