Paper Bags replacing Plastic for Fall Leaf Pickup

More and more cities are banning plastic bags for Fall Leaf Pickup and replacing with paper bags. While most cities use a reusable container for regular pickup of yard waste, the fall leaf pickup is just to large for a single container.

In days of old, large clear plastic bags were most often used. Around Halloween, you could even see large orange bags (Jack-O-Lantern) filled with leaves. The fall leaves are usually picked up and sent for composting. The compost is then used by the city for their many flower gardens, etc., or is sold or given, back to the city residents. Problem is, PLASTIC does not compost. A service fee of $12-$14 per ton, is often applied to leaf pickups that use plastic bags – cost to remove the bags from the compost heaps. Over the past 10 years, most large cities have banned the plastic bag for leaf pickup and replaced it with a paper bag.

Pro – paper bags can be composted and don’t need to be manually removed. They also stand-up when you are filling them.

Con – none – though some people have argued that paper will not stand-up to the rain and snow, in actual practice plastic bags have ripped apart as often as the thick wet paper bags.

Thus, of all the cities in Ontario that have switch from plastic to paper in the past 10 years, NONE have switched back to plastic.

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• China Bans Free Plastic Bags Whereas USA Sues
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Filed under: ecoFriendly