A crowd gathered at Mount Auburn Cemetery watched as James Farlowe powered on an electric weed whipper and showed off its near-silent operating capabilities, symbolizing a milestone moment for it as it became first cemetery in the United States to put its gas-powered handheld landscaping equipment to rest.
“They are lighter, and after a while your hand starts shaking when you use [gas-powered] tools, but these [electric] ones are different and also not as loud,” said Farlowe, Mount Auburn Cemetery’s assistant supervisor of turf & grounds.
Weed whips, or string trimmers, were a thorny problem in Mount Auburn’s move to going all-electric.
“The heavy wear-and-tear made us run through batteries so quick that it just became an unrealistic way to work,” said Ronnit Bendavid-Val, the cemetery’s vice president of horticulture & landscape, speaking at a ceremony May 28. This problem, along with any issues workers had with using the new tools, was addressed over 18 months of concerted work and training.
Now, formally, Mount Auburn has earned a Level 1 American Green Zone Alliance (AGZA) ‘Green Zone’ Certification.
AGZA is a nonprofit that works to reduce emissions from landscaping by helping governments, college campuses and private contractors transition from gas-powered equipment to electric alternatives. The group offers several certifications which guide landscaping and groundskeeping crews through the process of electrifying their equipment, and it runs trainings to teach work crews how to use modern electric equipment.
The cemetery worked with AGZA to scale down and replace gas-powered handheld equipment used by its work crews. Quiet Communities, a national nonprofit that works to reduce harm from noise pollution on public health and the environment, was also involved in the project.
Matthew Stephens, Mount Auburn’s president and CEO, said the cemetery approached AGZA several years ago, as the cemetery was trying to transition to electric equipment, which started in 2018. “When we got into [the transition], we realized how hard it was to do it, and we also realized there was this organizing entity that certifies you for all the hard work,” he said.
Jamie Banks, founder and president of Quiet Communities, “The work requirements are very different from other places that may have more open land, there are in-ground headstones, very elaborate memorials, it’s just not typical landscape and it can be very challenging [to electrify their tools].”
When Bendavid-Val joined Mount Auburn in 2022, “we had some battery-powered equipment,” but she and staff members wanted to expand usage of it.
Sustainability a value from the start
Mount Auburn isn’t new to achieving firsts in the U.S. It was founded as the first ‘garden cemetery’ in the nation back in 1831, and it jump-started the rural cemetery movement. Stephens said the AGZA effort “aligns with our values . . . Mount Auburn has spent, some might say, 190 plus years reinforcing sustainability as one of our core values.”
Electric equipment has advantages for workers, Stephens said, including usually being lighter and quieter. “So they are easier on their ears, and there is less vibrating, so it’s easier on their bodies.”
The cemetery projects it will eliminate 16 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, or roughly the equivalent of the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by 660 mature trees.
Rie Macchiarolo, the cemetery’s director of gardens & landscapes, said the transition was pretty “seamless” for their crews, noting that electric equipment has improved significantly over the last decade. “It takes a little bit of coordination to make sure you are rotating batteries and getting them charged, but beyond that they’re way nicer to use, not as loud, not as smelly and in general just feel better.”
Farlowe did express concern about how the new tools would handle the fall season, because of the scale of work and the impact weather conditions can have on battery life. But, he said, “as long as you keep charging up [unused] batteries, everything should go smooth. I just wish they’d make the batteries a little stronger.”
Bendavid-Val said Mount Auburn had invested in higher-capacity batteries to meet the demands of its electric weed whackers. It also acquired battery power stations with the capacity to charge 16 batteries simultaneously.
She said the cemetery was at the “edge” of the industry with this undertaking, although it may soon have company, as Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn had recently asked about the process. She said Mount Auburn will continue to adapt as technological advances are made. In the immediate future, the cemetery will work to make its fleet of almost 100 vehicles electric. Only about a third currently are, and the age of the cemetery’s electrical infrastructure may mean it needs an upgrade to support converting all of the vehicles.
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