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The best option is to leave a coat of leaves on your lawn and chop them up with your lawn mower to create a layer of mulch that will break down and give your lawn nutrients. This is most easily done when the leaves are dry and crunchy rather than when they are thick and soggy.
Place the rest of the chopped leaves around outdoor plants as ground cover and in your compost heap.
Burning leaves creates undesirable emissions, and it's illegal in most municipalities. Tossing them out in sealed non-biodegradable plastic bags sends them to landfills where they can't decompose properly and will leak harmful greenhouse gases.
Blowing them around with a leaf blower creates carbon emissions and noise pollution while eating energy and stirring up allergens. If none of this bothers you, a leaf blower can be useful to push foliage to the street in municipalities that offer street leaf sweeping and allow blowers. A rake also works just fine for this, however. Collected leaves are taken to farms or composting sites, according to local officials.
In municipalities, such as Chicago, that don't have leaf-sweeping days, pushing leaves into the street "can clog the drains in the street creating blockages and other problems," Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation spokesman Matt Smith said.
In areas of Chicago served by the blue bin program, residents can place bagged leaves next to the blue bin through November for pickup, Smith said. Paper or clear plastic bags are preferred. Do not put them in the blue bin or in the regular garbage can.
In municipalities that don't offer street leaf sweeping or blue bins, residents should find out when and how their municipality will accept bagged leaves —which often must be placed in biodegradable paper bags.
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Place the rest of the chopped leaves around outdoor plants as ground cover and in your compost heap.
Burning leaves creates undesirable emissions, and it's illegal in most municipalities. Tossing them out in sealed non-biodegradable plastic bags sends them to landfills where they can't decompose properly and will leak harmful greenhouse gases.
Blowing them around with a leaf blower creates carbon emissions and noise pollution while eating energy and stirring up allergens. If none of this bothers you, a leaf blower can be useful to push foliage to the street in municipalities that offer street leaf sweeping and allow blowers. A rake also works just fine for this, however. Collected leaves are taken to farms or composting sites, according to local officials.
In municipalities, such as Chicago, that don't have leaf-sweeping days, pushing leaves into the street "can clog the drains in the street creating blockages and other problems," Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation spokesman Matt Smith said.
In areas of Chicago served by the blue bin program, residents can place bagged leaves next to the blue bin through November for pickup, Smith said. Paper or clear plastic bags are preferred. Do not put them in the blue bin or in the regular garbage can.
In municipalities that don't offer street leaf sweeping or blue bins, residents should find out when and how their municipality will accept bagged leaves —which often must be placed in biodegradable paper bags.
Building price negotiators