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Most leaf pickup survives funding cut
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Mahoning County will still have a free leaf-collection program through November despite funding cuts by the county’s recycling division. Ten communities are participating in the program.
YOUNGSTOWN
Despite a drastic reduction in Mahoning County funding, the free collection of leaves is alive and well, with 10 communities participating.
Canfield Township, New Middletown, Struthers, Youngstown, Boardman and Sebring will pick up leaves in compostable bags made from paper or cornstarch from residents at curbside from now through mid- to-late November.
Campbell residents, however, must take their leaves in compostable bags to a central collection location at 125 Roosevelt Drive between Monday and Nov. 16.
“Leaves are a very useful item, particularly in compost facilities,” where they are made into mulch and other products, said Lou Vega, county recycling director. “There’s really no reason for them to go into a landfill.”
In most communities, participating residents must purchase compostable leaf bags, which are sold in major retail home-improvement stores. For example, a package of five such biodegradable bags retails for $1.88 at Home Depot.
Green Youngstown, however, is providing city residents with free leaf bags at its offices on the third floor of the City Hall Annex, 9 W. Front St., from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. That office will be open until 6 p.m. Thursday to distribute the bags.
New Middletown will also provide free bags to village residents from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., business days, at its municipal building, 10711 Main St.
Struthers residents may obtain up to five free compostable bags at city hall, 6 Elm St.
The villages of Poland and Lowellville and the city of Canfield will use suction trucks to remove the leaves residents rake to their curbs.
Schedules for curbside pickups by local road and street departments vary among the communities, with some segmenting their collection schedules for each side of town.
To help balance its budget after the loss of disposal-fee income from a landfill that closed last year, the county recycling division slashed its annual support for local leaf collection efforts from $76,000 to $10,000.
In doing so, the county decided to support only central drop-off sites. It also stopped paying for curbside collections and free leaf bag distributions, leaving communities that wanted to provide curbside pickup and free bag distribution services to do so at their own expense, Vega explained.
Since most participating local communities are compensating for the county funding cut, Vega said he doesn’t expect public participation in leaf composting to decline significantly. “They have reached out to their residents. They’ve listened to what they had to say,” he said of the local governments.
Although many communities found a way to stay with the program, one major suburb dropped out.
Austintown, which received $13,000 from the county and collected 3,695 bags of leaves from its residents at curbside last year, quit the program because of the funding cut, said Mike Dockry, township administrator.
“Either we were going to do curbside or we weren’t going to do it,” Dockry said. The township didn’t find a central drop-off site practical because bags and leaves might blow away in the wind while awaiting removal from such a site, he explained.
Vega said the county recycling division will soon post the leaf-collection arrangements for each community on the county recycling division website, greenteam.cc.
“It’s important for the environment” to compost leaves, said Peg Flynn, county recycling division educator. “Leaves are very compostable, so why would you throw them away” in a landfill? she added.
The county recycling division also encourages residents to do their own backyard composting, and it conducts five workshops on this topic each summer, she added.