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Shredders: Garden shredders are designed to create mulch from garden waste, which can then be used on your garden or  simply as compost. Obviously the amount of energy needed to shred objects such as small branches and twigs requires a fairly powerful motor or engine, for this reason most industrial/commercial shredders rely on petrol engines. For domestic use, both electric and petrol varieties exist and both technologies have advantages and disadvantages.
Electric machines are not only quieter but also cheaper to run, no engine means less maintenance costs and no need for petrol or oil. However the length of the supplied cable will dictate how much of your garden you can cover, unless you also use an extension cable. Most mainstream manufacturers offer electric models, commonly referred to as “quiet” ranges they are most suited to smaller gardens and less demanding tasks. With more emphasis now being placed on greenhouse emissions and fuel economy manufacturers now almost solely offer 4 stroke engines only and these are offered in more “industrial” level shredders. They tend to be more expensive but make up for it with better quality shredding and the ability to handle more strenuous tasks.
Two different types of cutting design are common, discs or blades chop smaller waste much more effectively and usually produce much finer mulch however they are limited in the size of objects they will handle. Cogs suffer from the fact they struggle to deal with leaves and other small materials, usually not mulching them at all, however they are the best choice if you plan to mulch small branches and twigs and are also self feeding as opposed to disc machines which require constant loading.
Are they really that environmentally friendly? If you're buying your electricity from a supplier of renewable green energy and you're making your own compost instread of either sending it to landfill tp produce methane or buying bags of peat-based compost; they can't be all bad.
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