This fall, one of the best steps you can take to help the environment is to leave fallen leaves on your property to reduce organic waste. It’s a Westchester County Initiative called “Love ‘Em and Leave’Em”(LELE).
Many municipalities already have adopted LELE practices, or have passed resolutions to support them, including Larchmont, Mamaroneck, New Rochelle, Scarsdale, White Plains, and Yonkers.
You can shred the leaves and leave them on your lawn or use them to mulch your garden beds. Or you can leave them for the compost pile or just leave them alone if you have a woodsy area on your property.
A list of local landscapers that will do shredding and mulching is available here.
If you have your leaves raked into bags and stacked at the curb, you are wasting a valuable nutrient resource and also increasing costs for your municipal services.
For more information on the costs and benefits, check out the LELE website here.
Another solution is to ban leaf blowers. Rakes work just as well and do not create the unbearable noise pollution we’ll all be exposed to over the next two months.
Another benefit…….fewer filthy, nerve shattering leaf blowers! They’re in use everywhere in what I call ‘The WAR on fall’! Enough! Quick fact from Wall Street Journal: The California Environmental Protection Agency estimated that operating a commercial leaf blower for one hour would emit more pollution than driving a 2016 Toyota Camry for about 1,100 miles!!
Full article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/that-ear-splitting-leaf-blower-it-also-emits-more-pollution-than-a-car-1513346400