Comments on: What’s wrong with this picture?

By: CindyW

CindyW — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:22:00 +0000

I live on the Peninsular, not far from Oakland. Every household has a large yard trimming bin. The waste management that covers our area picks up yard trimming (including leaves) every other week and compost it. Residents can go the site to get the ready-made compost for their gardens and yard for free. I love fall leaves, the color, the smell, the crunchy sound they make when I walk on them. Why people see them as nuisance is beyond me.

By: Green Bean

Green Bean — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:45:00 +0000

Ohhh, I hate this! I just finished doing some lasagna gardening (the sheet mulching technique used in permaculture) and was driving around looking for leaves. These are brown gold people! Don’t throw them out. Anyway, I liberated several plastic bags full of leaves that I found out on trash day. Free the leaves!

By: Radical Garbage Man

Radical Garbage Man — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:30:00 +0000

The City of Madison, WI composts the leaves that it picks up at the curb. In fact in Wisconsin it's illegal to put yard waste in landfills. The rule here is that any plastic bags used must be left open at the top so that the leaf crews can dump them out.

Come to think of it, landfilling of yard waste is illegal in California, too. Are those clear bags ones that you usually use for refuse? I don't get why you would need extra leaf collection if you already have the compostable bin, but it seems like tying up the bags of extra leaves is a bad idea.

By: Greg Peterson

Greg Peterson — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 14:35:00 +0000

Oh my gosh…one of my pet peeves which has NEVER made sense to me. I think that the basis for the problem is twofold – people not understanding because we have never been taught the value of the leaves and in many cities like mine we are required to bag our grass clippings and leaves – the city tells us we have to so we must. I think that we need to stop the bagging process before it ever gets to that point and educate people on just what they can do with these great compostables.

I am a practitioner of permaculture (http://www.permaculture.net). In permaculture this is one of the issues we address with a process called sheet mulching. Here is a short explanation about permaculture and a description of sheet mulching http://www.yourguidetogreen.com/TheUrbanFarm/2007/05/sheet_mulchingaka_lasagna_gard.html

Beth, Thanks for doing what you are doing. This is how change is created in the world.