How to Use Municipal Leaf Pickup

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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Most town landfills used to allow unlimited dumping of leaves. As landfills ran out of space, most towns adjusted the list of accepted materials for their landfills. Luckily, many towns still provide a municipal leaf pickup that picks up your bags of leaves bi-weekly or monthly.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step1

Call your town's department of public works to find out about municipal leaf pickup. If the DPW can't provide you with information about pickup times and locations, someone at the department should be able to direct you to the agency responsible for providing this service.

Step2

Bag your leaves in the proper containers. Most towns require that leaves be packed in special bags for municipal pickup. These bags are often available at various stores around town.

Step3

Think about if you want to use any of your leaves for compost or mulching purposes. If so, be sure you set aside enough leaves in a covered bin made of recycled plastic.

Step4

Put your leaf bags out on your curb or at the specific pickup spot for your neighborhood. You want to be sure that you put your leaves out at the right time, because most municipal leaf pickups are only offered a few times each year.

Step5

Watch for a bill for leaf pickup in your mail and be sure to pay it on time. Some towns offer municipal leaf pickups as a free service to their taxpayers, but others use a private company and charge for pickup. Paying your bill on time is necessary to ensure that you'll be offered municipal leaf pickup again next year.

Tips & Warnings

Find out about leaf pickup times before leaves start to fall. Cleaning up leaves and bagging them takes time. You'll want to have a couple weekends available to clean up your yard before pickup.
Some towns don't require that you bag your leaves. All you have to do is rake your leaves into a certain area by the street. These towns send a truck by with a large leaf shredder to suck up your pile of leaves.
Private companies may offer a leaf collection service if you happen to miss the town's collection dates. This private service is often somewhat expensive.
If you have elderly neighbors, give them a hand getting their yard ready for leaf collection.
Consider other options before committing to leaf pickup. Often it's easier to put your leaves in a compost pile than it is to bag them all up and put them out for collection.