Outdoor equipment

Such as this Neuton battery push mower (left) and Scotts reel mower (right) -- are on the rise."There's a lot of innovation with battery technologies," Mr. Neece says. "There are longer run times, better performance, and then you have prices coming down. Everything is happening at once."This market may get more heated thanks to newly proposed legislation that would offer consumers a 25% tax credit up to $1,000 toward the purchase of environmentally friendly lawn,

Garden or forestry power equipment. The "Greener Gardens Act" was introduced late last month by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) and two other U.S. congressional delegates from Vermont. It is designed to provide "immediate incentive for people to purchase clean, alternative fuel engines that ... operate on little or no fossil fuel."While non-gas, corded and non-corded consumer power equipment has been around for years, the breadth of the offerings is fast-expanding.

Towson, Md.-based Black & Decker Corp., which first introduced a battery push mower in 1970, recently has been expanding its line of outdoor tools with interchangeable 18-volt nickel-cadmium battery packs to include everything from a power scrubber for washing boats and cars, to a pruning saw. Marketing focuses on convenience and ease-of-maintenance as much as the environment.“We now sell more dollars worth of cordless string trimmers than the corded one," says Joe Newland,

Black & Decker's product manager for outdoor products. "There are tradeoffs, and what you lose in power, you gain in convenience and weight." He notes that female buyers are a particularly robust audience for gas-less tools. "They don't want to start with filling it. They just want to use it."