• MSNBC.com, Tuesday, May 29, 2007 10:30 AM

Headlines about global warming, pollution and vanishing natural resources have people--and not just those wearing Birkenstocks--turning to manual lawn mowers in increasing numbers. "I definitely see a bigger selection of people all the time, especially since the Al Gore movie ("An Inconvenient Truth")," says Lars Hundley, the owner of a Dallas-based gardening equipment retailer.

Exact statistics aren't available, but an estimated 350,000 manual mowers are sold in the United States each year, according to Teri McClain, a sales administrator at the 112-year-old American Lawn Mower Co. While that is just a fraction of the 6 million gas-powered walk-behind mowers that hit the market last year, it is about 100,000 more than were sold just five years ago, and seven times as many as the estimated 50,000 a year sold in the 1980s.

American Lawn Mower was one of about 60 domestic manufacturers of manual mowers at the end of World War II, when power mowers began taking over the industry, McClain says. Now, it is the only one making the mowers in the U.S., although some U.S.-based companies make the mowers in other countries.

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