Autumn in Alberta brings with it spectacular fall colours, but those red, yellow and orange leaves mean hours of work for homeowners and landscapers.
In St. Albert, “The Botanical Arts City,” the leaves are everywhere — layers of them on lawns, boulevards, in gutters, even on cars.
And if you’ve done the work to rake your yard and the load the leaves into plastic bags, you’d better get ready to roll up your sleeves again.
The City of St. Albert is no longer picking up leaves in plastic bags. Homeowners have to use paper bags instead.
Response to the program, new for this year, has been good, said Olivia Kwok, supervisor of waste and diversion programs with the City of St. Albert.
“Plastic bags can’t be composted,” Kwok said. “This is a really good opportunity for us to tie into our single use item reduction strategy that we’re working on in St. Albert.”
Plastic bags for yard waste are also prohibited in the Town of Devon, and the paper-bag rule is coming to Edmonton in 2020.
That’s when Edmonton will roll out out a four-stream waste collection citywide. Yard waste will be collected in paper yard-waste bags on special collection days in spring and fall.
Already, 8,000 Edmonton households are taking part in a pilot project called the Edmonton Cart Rollout. Homeowners receive four seasonal yard-waste collection days per year — two in the spring and two in the fall — and the yard waste has to go into paper bags.
‘I thought they’d pick it up’
St. Albert homeowner Gary Howell, who raked his yard and bagged his leaves last week, learned the hard way that plastic bags are not being picked up.
One bag had a green City of St. Albert sticker attached to it, explaining why the bags were left behind and the options for getting rid of them.
The options in St. Albert are to use paper bags, reusable plastic garbage cans on wheels, or a green organics cart. Residents can also drop leaves off at the city’s compost depot on Villeneuve Road.
“They want you to buy paper bags now, more environmentally safe. I don’t like it,” said Howell.
He was back on all fours Tuesday afternoon piling his leaves back into plastic bags, which he’s been emptying at the compost depot himself.
He’s also putting them into his reusable garbage can.
Howell says he’s not impressed. He understands the need to cut down on single-use plastic but said he’s not about to go out and buy paper bags.
The paper bags are sold at most hardware and big-box stores. They come in packages of five for anywhere from $2.50 to $3.
Other people on Howell’s crescent in the Braeside neighbourhood, and elsewhere around St. Albert, seem to be buying in. Numerous houses had large paper bags filled with leaves sitting curbside ready for pick-up.
Homeowner Jessie Nordholt was cleaning up his yard on Tuesday.
‘A step forward in eliminating plastics’
“There’s always a ton of leaves that fall of these huge trees,” Nordholt said as he used his leaf blower to clean up his front lawn.
“It’s definitely a step forward in eliminating plastics,” he said. “I still don’t use plastic or paper I put it all in the supplied bins that St. Albert supplies.”
Nordholt said he can turn five bags of leaves into half that by mulching them with his mower.
If you’re still one of the many homeowners with leaves in plastic bags in St. Albert, you still have a chance to get them picked up, as long as you take them out of the plastic bags.
The city is currently picking up leaves until Oct. 11.
The final round of pick-up happens from Oct. 28 until Nov. 8.