Homeowners who haven't had to bag leaves in decades 'furious' as Toronto cuts service to save $2.3M

The leaves would still rot regardless of what they land on..

I leave the years ever year, and I don't have any issues. The problem is that most people don't want a lawn that looks or behaves like nature, they want immaculate carpet outside of their house that may or may not be a plant.

They complain because people have this idea that their lawns must be perfect, uncovered, mono-culture grass, rich green lawns year round unless there is snow. Of course not all the leaves are gone come spring thaw but they’ll break down still. Amazingly the trees of the planet have done this exact process for billions of years without there being a massive pile of leaves across the whole earth. It will be fine

What tiny bit of leaves remain in the spring will be gone the first time you mow your lawn

I love how this is getting an equal amount of down votes. There is nothing wrong with wanting a clean yard or a nice lawn. If you own property, you're free to do with it as you please. If a green lawn is your thing, you're gonna have to rake. Leaving leaves in your yard over the winter makes for a nice rotten sludge in the springtime that can cause issues with grass growth underneath it. It's also pretty gnarly to clean up compared to nice dry fluffy piles of leaves in autumn even after it dries up.

I get the homeowners being pissed off about losing the service because damn does it suck to have to rake your lawn every year. It can be a lot more labor intensive than you might imagine. I'd whinge about it a bit too if I had it easy like these folks did since the 60s. Ultimately, it's not that big a deal since all they need to do is just bag the leaves and leave them by the roadside. They're already halfway there since they previously needed only to rake them to the roadside.

This service was incredibly wasteful and likely should have never existed in the first place so the $2.3M savings will likely do a lot of good elsewhere (hopefully for services for disadvantaged folks in the area).

My question is how have we not figured out how to make something practical out of autumn leaves like a new kind of paper or something like that? I can only imagine that if someone was to develop some kind of use for bulk leaves like that they'd have people ringing their phones off the hook for pickup every year. I'd certainly be signing up for pickup. It would save me a solid 5hrs of cleanup in my yard.