Leaves suggestion

Staging area for leavesInitial disclaimer: if your municipal or private trash collection service collects leaves and mulches them, ignore this post!

However, if your trash service does not collect organic waste – and you don’t have a neighbor who can use them in their garden, this suggestion is for you…

If you have trees in your yard (if you have a yard) and they are dumping down the leaves, I have an idea for you.

Don’t rake them up and put them in plastic bags to be taken away by the trash truck. Put them into a staging area and then fill your garbage cans each week till they are gone.

The leaves won’t go away. They’ll wait patiently until your garbage cans have enough room. If you’re in a windy area, jump on the leaves so they become a more solid mass.

Disclaimer: I realize that composting is an even better solution, but if you don’t have a garden, you have to do something with those leaves.

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5 Replies to “Leaves suggestion”

  1. I think if you asked the Sanitation Dept. or whatever it is called there (here it is “Solid Waste Management”), they would prefer that you bag it and put it out all at once. I’m sure they add capacity (trucks and workers) at this time of year to collect all of the leaf bags, and they probably dispose of them separately. Putting the leaves in with your regular garbage just means they go to the landfill along with everything else.

    1. Good point – if your garbage company (or local government’s equivalent) deals with organic waste differently than other garbage, what you say is a good suggestion.

      Ours – it all goes into the landfill. Thankfully, they offer recycling (for an extra charge) – and gladly we pay that & recycle what we can.

  2. A lot of municipalities will collect leaves separately (I know for sure that Denver does this) which they mulch, compost, and add to the discarded Christmas Trees to create the mulch the city uses for landscaping in the spring.

    Just bagging and chucking leaves puts extremely valuable organic matter in a place where it can’t be used at all.

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