Smog-producing leaf blowers can be exchanged for cleaner models

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Give us your tired, your old, your smog-producing leaf blowers, yearning... to be replaced by more environmentally friendly blowers.

Registration is ongoing at locations around the region in an annual exchange for professional gardeners and landscapers to trade in older, highly polluting backpack leaf blowers for quieter, low-emission units. The exchange is organized by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Up to 1,500 new leaf blowers -- which the agency says will reduce smog-forming pollutants by 21 tons each year -- will be sold for less than half their retail price at the events, held at 11 locations around the Southland. The old blowers will be fed -- and given new life -- to the Beast Recycler.

-- Raja Abdulrahim