No less an authority than the USDA is now on the bandwagon for #leavetheleaves. That is, the idea that gathering and disposing of fallen autumn leaves is foolish from an environmental standpoint.
The conspiracy-minded among you may view this as just another facet of the Deep State, an evil cabal within the U.S. Civil Service determined to disrupt every facet of the American Way. Yes, stooping so low as to attack that most harmless of small-town fall rituals …
… requesting that citizens rake/blow leaves to the curb, so the Town can repeatedly drive its high-decibel fleet of dedicated leaf-vacuuming equipment through town, and so spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to suck up those leaves, then trucking hundreds of tons of leaves down the interstate so that they can be sterilized via hot composting at some remote location, ensuring that no offspring of this year’s crop of butterflies and similar insects survive.
Well, at least, that’s the tradition in my small town. It’s an industrial-scale process that’s a far cry from Normal Rockwell, if you get my drift.
Source: Pinterest.
The USDA is just the most recent in a long line of organizations that have gotten behind the idea that leaf collection and disposal of this type is a relic of the past. Historically, in this area, it’s the immediate successor to the era in which suburbanites routinely raked up and burned fall leaves. Before that was banned owing to the resulting air pollution.
Locally, even the surrounding county (Fairfax County, VA) has proposed to stop doing vacuum leaf collection (see Post #1821). In part, because that turned out to be a real hassle for county staff this past year. But also for all the good reasons outlined on the USDA web page.
But in Vienna, VA, traditions die hard, unless there’s some profit to be made in killing them. And new learning percolates excruciatingly slowly. Town-wide, this is mostly about doing our bit to slow the insect apocalypse (reference National Academies of Science). Not sure that matters to most residents, even though it should, from a survival-of-our-species standpoint. All said and done, it’s still an open question as to whether we can break ourselves of this 40-year-old tradition. Just to benefit a bunch of butterflies and such.
My prior screeds on this subject include:
- Post 1822, on the fuel used in this process.
- Post 1821, on Fairfax County staff recommending no leaf vacuuming.
- Post 1612, on the emissions from gas versus electric leaf blowers.
- Post G22-034, on vacuum leaf collection being a relic of the past.
- Post 1463, on putting the environment first in the Town’s decision-making.
This, in addition to several posts on the economics of the Town of Vienna’s centralized leaf collection and disposal process.
Pictures in this post are mainly from Gencraft.com and Freepik AI
