The City of Greensboro has come up with a new solution to the controversial end of loose leaf collection.
In August, the Greensboro City Council voted to end the loose leaf collection program at the end of the current leaf season. Starting in March 2024, Greensboro residents will be required to place yard waste, including leaves, in the yard waste container that will be provided by the city or in biodegradable paper bags.
During the 2024-2025 leaf season, the city will not be vacuuming up leaves raked or blown out to the street but will only pickup leaves in the city provided container or in biodegradable paper bags, with a limit of 15 bags per week.
Despite the decision having been made in August, there are still petitions circulating opposing the end of loose leaf collection and now the city has offered another solution – don’t rake or blow the leaves at all.
The program called “Leave the Leaves,” launched by the City of Greensboro’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience under its Sustainable Landscapes project, encourages residents to “leave the leaves on lawn and gardens or mulch them instead of raking and bagging them.”
People who join the program will receive a lovely “Leave the Leaves” sign to display in their yard.
According to the press release, “Letting leaves naturally decompose where they land creates natural mulch that enriches the soil and creates a habitat and food for beneficial microorganisms, insects and small wildlife, among other environmental benefits.”
The Greensboro Sustainable Landscapes Project is an educational initiative led by the Office of Sustainability and Resilience in partnership with other city departments and community partners to encourage residents to use environmentally friendly landscaping practices to enhance the natural environment in and around their homes and businesses.
For those interested in learning how to not rake or blow the leaves in their yards, there will be a demonstration at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28 at the home of At-large Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter at 3601 Brassfield Oaks Dr.
Abuzuaiter has reportedly mulched the leaves in her yard for the past two decades.
You’ve got the year wrong. In 2024-25th city won’t vacuum leaves. This year, 2023-24, the city is still vacuuming leaves.
Is this a joke? Do they seriously need to have a demonstration for “For those interested in learning how to not rake or blow the leaves in their yards, there will be a demonstration at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28”?
If we have to teach people how ‘not’ to rake, we have bigger problems…
They need to consider the problems caused by leaving your lawn covered in leaves all winter. Wet leaves will smother your grass, causing other issues. The city needs to do it’s research before offering a solution that is not really a solution.
Are these people running the city that stupid? Some leaves are Okay to leave on the lawn. To many have hundreds of trees around them. With so many leaves left on the grass will kill the grass. I say use the lawn mower, cut them up, blow the remains into a pile and put them in the bin the city gives you.
Ok. So at 10 A. M. Tuesday, Nov. 2 perhaps over 300 thousand Greensboro citizens are going to show up at Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter’s house in order to learn how not to rake or blow leaves. Now that will be a sight for sore eyes. LOL! Poor police department. They are definitely going to have their hands full with traffic control. BUT, this will be a worthwhile demonstration because mulching leaves IS the way to go.
I missed typed the date. Should have been Nov. 28 to view the demonstration at Abzuaiter’s house.
And another idiotic idea from our city…learn to love the leaves! Just leave them on your lawn! Really? What genius came up with this idea? It’s very snippy & reminds me of Marie Antoinette’s quote: “Just let ’em eat cake!
Just curious about the leaf problem. Winston Salem just bought more leaf removal equipment they are doing 3 rounds this year smaller city much less tax rate numbers than Greensboro smaller tax base but they are able to continue their leaf program. Why is that
OK, how many bags can I drop off for her to Mulch?
Is it already April Fool’s Day? This had to be a joke. They levied a record tax increase and then claimed how much money they would save by stopping loose leaf collection (not much). The reality is: the city hasn’t taken the leaf collection job seriously for years, and the effort and resources and equipment show it. Many of us with a lot of trees rely upon that service. So now the city thinks it a good idea if we just let our leaves “shelter in place.” Well, I guess so. That way the city does NOTHING at all! The CIty Manager needs to go! They don’t seem to understand (or care) that for many of us, that is NOT an option. If we left the leaves on the lawn and mowed them, the resulting depth of the “mulch” by the end of the season my lawn would be about a foot deep. They need to use some of that extra tax money to get modern, efficient, high-capacity equipment, hire the necessary labor and get the job done.
The more the city comes up with solutions for leaf collection the worse they get. Can you imagine how this will look if the citizens quit raking leaves and just leave them where they fall. They also said they would ask the Boy Scouts if they would do the seniors leaves. On our street of 26 residence there are 12 seniors and 10 of them are 80 or above so how many scouts do you think it would take to clean those 10 yards? The system we have should continue. My taxes went up 400.00 this year which included the leaf vacuuming system and common sense tells us all it easier on our employees then them having to lift 10 bags at every house each week. On our street alone that would be 260 bags. Our neighborhood has 9 street with a minimum of 25 houses so that could be as many as 2250 bags in our neighborhood along. Those poor workers can not keep that pace up daily during leaf season. Someone needs to think what they are asking of or employees.
“During the 2023-2024 leaf season, the city will not be vacuuming up leaves raked or blown out to the street but will only pickup leaves in the city provided container or in biodegradable paper bags, with a limit of 15 bags per week.”
ERROR – We are NOW in the 2023-2024 leaf season. Should read: 2024-2025 leaf season.
I mulch my leaves and will be doing it about every 7-10 days until January, when all my leaves have fallen and all the neighborhood leaves from folks who don’t deal with theirs, have blown into my yard. If you don’t keep doing it on a regular basis, too many leaves will accumulate and then it’s a real chore to try to mulch. Folks who are unable to do their own and have to hire it done, would spend a tremendous amount of $$$, if they have the yard mulched numerous times. Landscapers, who deal with leaves, are not going to be interested in mulching large quantities, because it’s very time consuming.
Leave it to the City to put forth a “solution” that is seriously limited.
This is actually a more intelligent solution than the containers (which I’m pretty sure will be so bad of a solution that it will be abandoned). Yet for those with lawns, it will be difficult: A typical mower will not shred the leaves fine enough not to smother lawns without several mowings.
Have the council braintrust check with HOA’s to see if crappy looking yards are allowed.
Does anyone accept “leave the leaves” as anything in the real world?
People with leaves vote.
I used to take pride in being an independent that had equal views on conservative/progressive issues but these clowns on the City Council need to go. They only care about cutting services to middle class taxpayers, allowing unsocialized kids to run rampant and wasting our tax dollars on an endless parade of Community programs that only enrich the DEI crowd. I would vote for Mussolini to get this train running on time.
No Blowing/Raking Leaves is the latest ridiculous idea for the City to drop a program that we pay taxes for. It may work for a few property owners with small lots and minimal landscaping. Lawns and flowers DO NOT grow under too much mulch. We know from experience and had to remove 3 years worth and pay a lot to re-do our former beautiful yard. Have the geniuses in our City government thought about leaves piling up dangerously and creating road hazards in rain and fire hazards in drought? How about mold, mosquitoes, ticks, roaches, snakes, rats, mice and other unhealthy side effects? Collect the darn leaves and keep our neighborhoods safe and beautiful! Save money on wasteful jobs and frivolous spending.
What if I am cooking out and my charcoal grill gets knocked over ( by an act of nature )and the leaves from the Greensboro Sustainable Landscapes Project catch on fire , inturn catch my house on fire. It appears the city of Greensboro will be buying me a new house ! I followed their rule to the “T” !
Could we have input from our fire department as to the risk of not raking the leaves and the fire hazard.
Could we get some input from the City department responsible for keeping our street drains from clogging up?
Could the landscapers and/or grass seed sellers give us their opinion of what it will do to the grass if leaves are not mulched properly and how often one’s yard needs to be mowed to properly mulch?
Could someone provide the costs of the various other city programs compared to leaf collection costs?
Can we get input from realtors as to the reduction in home values as a result trashy looking neighborhood yards and roads?
A very sad time for the beauty of our city, hopefully our garbage collection will continue before someone decides the citizens must compost their own garbage in their yard.
Office of Sustainability and Resilience???? Sounds like a candidate for Sunset legislation.
Mulching areas of high density oaks just leads to mold and ever-increasing height of the soil.
Once again, the city “leaders” come up with an idea (for budget reasons) to eliminate a popular program the city has provided all these years. If they’re looking for ways to reduce the budget, how about getting rid of useless departments with fancy names and get back to serving the public.
These people are NUTS that are running our city! The squirrels are right at home!
And lastly…they are hired help…the ones at the top, and they have yet to figure out how to deliver what the citizens that pay over inflated salaries for poor and bad decisions! Sign one of the partitions!
While that idea sounds good, it’s totally impractical. Imagine all those millions of leaves blowing around on these windy days! In the streets, into the gutters clogging them up, etc… Only practical for neighborhoods with few trees.
Dumb and dumber! Just resume the old policy of leaf collection. There was a great letter in the N&R
today for keeping the policy in place.
You can not leave leaves that have fallen from the trees directly on the lawn. It will suffocate the grass and cause fungus to grow; you must mulch the leaves into tiny pieces with a good mulching blade. Can’t believe the City told people to just leave the leaves on your yard. This whole thing has been one screwed up mess just to save some money.