Tavis Schmidt says it was his young son who drove home for him the irony in the pollution people generate while sprucing up their home's little piece of nature—their lawn, shrubs, and trees.

Schmidt, 34, of Spokane, says that while toiling away in his garden at home last summer, his then 5-year-old son, Raziel, began complaining about the bombardment of exhaust fumes that had wafted over from multiple neighbors' yards as they all seemed to mow their lawns at the same time. His son said then that he was feeling sick from the increasingly obnoxious fumes.

Schmidt recalls thinking to himself, "It's too bad somebody is not out there doing electrical stuff."

He thought about buying an electric mower that he could share with his neighbors, he says. Since then, he's gone a lot further than that.

In April, Schmidt started operating a new business, Clean Air Lawn Care of Spokane LLC, an affiliate of Fort Collins, Colo.-based franchisor Clean Air Lawn Care. Clean Air Lawn Care of Spokane, like the parent company's other franchises, is a lawn-maintenance business that uses electric equipment such as mowers, string trimmers, hedge trimmers, and blowers. Franchisees use mulching mowers, but compost some of the grass and other yard waste they generate, or their clients do.

"The energy for this business is 100 percent renewable," Schmidt says.

His business offers mowing, edging, bush trimming, planting, and organic fertilizing, which he says is safe for kids, pets, and the aquifer, and involves product that is only slightly more expensive than standard fertilizers.

He says customers make a monthly payment, or pay annually, for his services. A customer who has a contract pays about $33 per mowing of an average-size lawn, between 3,000 to 4,000 square feet, he says. The type of terrain or number of trees in a lawn can increase the price, while a customer's proximity to another of Schmidt's clients could potentially reduce the cost, he says.

He says his mowing prices are comparable to those of other licensed lawn-mowing services.

An organic fertilizer application for an average-size lawn costs about $55, he says, which is typically about $10 to $15 more expensive than a non-organic application.

He also provides gardening, flower planting, debris clearing, and spring and fall clean-up services. He encourages customers to compost yard waste, and says he can help them get set up to do that.

For now, Schmidt operates the business entirely by himself, and has one truck. Within the next couple of years, he says he'd like to have three or four trucks operating, a couple people working for him, and for his business to be grossing about $150,000 in annual sales. To get his business up and running, it cost Schmidt less than $35,000, including paying for franchise fees, his truck, equipment, business license, and insurance.

The closest other Clean Air Lawn Care franchisees are in Seattle and Portland, he says.

So far, he has 10 contracts for lawn service, mostly on the South Hill, and he spends about 20 hours a week on his new endeavor. He fits in the work around his primary job as an assistant planner for the city of Spokane Valley, where he has worked for 2 1/2 years.

Schmidt hopes to hire a part-time employee when he lands a few more contracts, so that person can mow during hours when Schmidt might not be available.

"I want the business to grow and be successful," he says. "Every lawn that I mow helps the air in Spokane. I genuinely care about the environment."

He soaks up being outdoors, too, he says, particularly during the months when his business will be able to operate, from early spring to late into the fall.

"It's an active job," Schmidt says. "It's not sitting in a cube."

He says he enjoys interacting with people, and feels like he's making a difference environmentally. Every lawn he mows with electric equipment is one less lawn that's mowed with a gas-powered machine, he notes.

Schmidt grew up north of Spokane in the Colbert area, spending time in his youth exploring the forests and mountains there, he says. Back then, he learned to appreciate nature, he says.

In his teens, he operated a neighborhood-based summer lawn-care and winter snow-plowing business. Later, as an adult, he spent time in various jobs in the construction, historic renovation, and landscaping fields.

He earned a bachelor's degree from Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, Ariz., studying environmental planning and geography. While in school, Schmidt worked as a park ranger at the Grand Canyon, where he provided emergency medical and informational assistance to visitors, he says.

He moved back to the Spokane area to raise his children and provide them with the same opportunities and environment that he had enjoyed earlier in the Inland Northwest, he says.

"If the business grows the way I want it to grow, at some point I'm going to have to make a decision as to whether I want to stay at the Valley full time," he says. "I might decide to take the riskier route of relying more on my new business, using that as my sole source of income."

For his new business, Schmidt drives a sporty-looking, silver 2007 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, which draws a surprising amount of attention from curious onlookers—mostly younger—who want to know what the solar panels mounted on the cab are powering, he says.

The truck, though he chose it for its fuel efficiency, is not a hybrid. He uses the panels, rather, to charge the tools of his new trade, like his string trimmer and blower, and to power an electric Black & Decker lawn mower that must be plugged in.

One of Schmidt's customers, home owner Ian Cunningham, a 55-year-old South Hill resident, says he'd never paid someone for lawn service until he contracted with Schmidt.

He heard about Schmidt via e-mail—part of Schmidt's "grass-roots" advertising campaign—and signed up for the weekly service, and already has been impressed enough to refer people he knows to Schmidt's business.

"I'm impressed on several levels really," Cunningham says. "Tavis is a really nice guy. He's really done his homework on the program."

Cunningham says the opportunity presented itself at the right time, because he wanted the service. He says he wouldn't have contracted with a standard lawn service.

"It's kind of cool to see him pull up with his pickup and solar panels on it," Cunningham says. "It's more than just the basic lawn service; he's doing lawn care. The lawn seems to be liking it."

The price might be a bit higher, Cunningham says, "but if so, it's really marginal; it's certainly not noticeable to me."

Schmidt says, "People like to see solar panels at work, benefiting people and businesses. It's technology at work here in Spokane. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback."

Sometimes the younger people say, "'If I had a house I'd hire you in a second,'" he recalls.

Along with other environmentally-friendly equipment, Schmidt has two cordless, battery-powered electric mowers, made by a company called Neuton Inc., that cost about $500 each, he says. The putting green-colored Neuton, while not silent, is less obnoxious than its gas-powered cousins.

"It's only about as loud as a vacuum," he says.

He charges the batteries for his Neuton mowers at home, and says he offsets his business-related electrical use there by purchasing wind energy through Avista Utilities' Buck-A-Block Program.

Schmidt offsets the gas his truck burns for business purposes by giving money to nonprofit carbon-offset organization Carbonfund.org. That organization says on its Web site that it makes it easier and more affordable for individuals, businesses, and other organizations to reduce their effects on the climate. The monetary donations it receives go to support renewable energy, energy efficiency, and reforestation projects, Schmidt says. The money he spends offsetting his nonrenewable energy use related to his business ensures the business is 100 percent "carbon neutral," he says.

The franchisor, Clean Air Lawn Care, says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that between 5 percent and 10 percent of all air pollution comes from lawn equipment. Gallon for gallon, lawn mower engines contribute 93 times more smog-forming emissions than cars, the latest available data show, he says.

Americans burn 800 million gallons of gas mowing lawns each year, it says. In 2008, the company says its franchisees removed the equivalent of 32,000 pounds of air pollutants, equaling more than 1 million vehicle miles.

The U.S. Green Building Council has included the use of electric lawn care equipment in the newest Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification process for existing buildings, Schmidt says.

Building owners and operators that hire him, or others like him, for lawn maintenance get more points toward LEED certification, he says.

Schmidt says his customers tend to be those with a concern for the environment, and most, unlike Cunningham, have contracted for lawn services in the past.

"They just figure that if they are going to hire someone to do their lawn, why not hire the guy who's not using fuel and who's going to be quiet," he says.