Green Options

[Creative Commons photo by Unbridled Transportaton]

California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, offered huge discounts to residents who wanted to swap their gas guzzling lawn mowers for electric.

Gas-powered lawn mowers are terrible polluters, but they’ll have to clean up their act in the next few years. So say new regulations announced this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Under the EPA’s new standards, small spark-ignition engines such as those used in lawn mowers will have to reduce their hydrocarbon emissions by 35 percent starting in 2011. Gas-powered boats and other personal watercraft will also have to cut their pollution levels, with those new restrictions coming into play in 2010.

The guy in the picture is JP Patten, entrepreneur and computer expert, shown with his newly outfitted biodiesel lawn mowers. Now, I think this guy’s got a great idea, he buys lawnmower motors from China, takes them apart, rebuilds them so they burn waste grease from deep fryers.

So far, so good. He says the engines are more powerful and more efficient than their gas counterparts, and they cause much less pollution. Ok, I’m sold, but how much are they?