Trees and Progress

Image from http://sainthelenaisland.info/dofe.htm 

There are quite a few trees in Jamestown, improving the appearance of town. We don’t get pronounced seasons, as do places further from the Equator, so there isn’t really an Autumn (“Fall”) when the trees shed all their leaves in preparation for Winter.  Trees lose leaves as and when they need replacing, throughout the year, so they are dropping leaves continually at all times.

Fallen leaves are fine in a forest – they fertilise the ground – but in town they are a nuisance, building up into piles of rotting foliage and blocking pathways, roads and drains.  So the job of leaf-sweeper here is not a seasonal one – it must be done throughout the year at intervals of just a few weeks.

“In the before days” (that’s the Saint way of saying “in the past”), a couple of chaps would turn up with brooms.  They would merrily chat with each other and with passers-by, and sometimes even sang as they worked, accompanied by the gently swish of stiff broom on concrete.  It took a couple of hours to do an area and was not an intrusive process.  But now it has been modernised.

Today a single chap does the job, equipped with a “leaf blower”.  In case you haven’t seen one, this is a petrol-powered engine driving a fan, and the idea is that you use the stream of air generated by the fan to blow the fallen leaves into a pile so that they are easier to shovel onto the cart for disposal.

There are, however, some issues with this.

Firstly a petrol-powered device is inherently more damaging to the environment than a couple of chaps with brooms, consuming scarce natural resources and generating various pollutants.

Secondly the process seems to take a great deal longer than the manual method – at least four and maybe up to six hours to clear a patch previously cleared in two.

Thirdly the machine makers a great deal of noise.  When the leaf-blower is operating in the Duke of Edinburg Playground it is actually necessary in my adjacent home to turn up the radio, television or whatever to hear it over the noise, which seems to run almost continuously for the whole morning, starting at 7am.

Lastly I feel sorry for the poor operator.  Because of the noise he (it’s always a he) is required to wear ear-defenders and because the direction the leaves may take is somewhat unpredictable he must wear a face-protecting visor too.  This makes interacting with anybody else impossible.  So instead of friendly companionship and maybe a cheery song he must operate isolated in a screened bubble, entirely alone.

Clearly, this is progress.  What puzzles me is who benefits from it?