Last Updated on January 8, 2025 by Brian Beck
Something that we often overlook when we are paying for products and services is the cost of energy. It is factored into everything that we partake in. This holds true in the landscaping industry. It is often overlooked and very rarely paid attention to but there is a cost for human and mechanical energy. This is one of the fundamental flaws in the business model that exist in the turf cutting industry. The energy that is expended cutting grass is largely wasted on: getting to the job, operating equipment, having human beings execute a job that can be largely improved with automation are some prime examples. It takes a profound amount of energy to operate a gasoline powered lawnmower and most of it goes to waste. It doesn’t take very much energy the cut the tips of the grass. If you can imagine that 1 hp is equivalent to 740 W of energy and the same task can be completed with less than 100 W of energy you can quickly tabulate how much energy we are wasting. Getting to the job site is another massive consumer of energy. A lot of people don’t understand the amount of time and expense it takes getting to a property just to perform a task that may take 15 to 30 minutes. Approximately two thirds of the cost of doing the job is simply pulling up to the curb in front of the house. The next huge consumer of energy is understandably a human being of course, but is this really necessary? With the recent advances in navigation, battery technology and machine capability robotic mowing can take over this monotonous task which will allow us to reallocate the labor from human beings into more important and creative tasks thus creating a lot of efficiency in these three areas. When we can mow a lawn before it needs to be cut, defeat the weather, eliminate travel to the worksite, reduce stress on plant material, reduce employee stress from exposure to machines and lessen the impact on the environment you can quickly see the value of automation. All of these factors will play a part in the stabilization of cost and the practices that will be implemented moving forward when it comes to mowing grass with machine. We can do much better in the technology now exists to allow us to do so.
