The only bipartisan issue remaining is leaf removal, which is stupid.
Is leaf removal easily the stupidest way to spend public money?
I was home in suburban upstate New York recently for my mom’s birthday. We watch an epic Saturday of football during which the water heater broke and flooded the basement. All hands on deck. Fitting though, as later that night we went to see the best guitarist out of the Louisiana bayou play where water and land are indistinguishable. Alas, it was also a few days before election day in our scorched Earth political moment. The Zeldin for Governor signs were out next to the Hochul signs. Next to all the most flamboyantly Republican homes stood free book libraries, Black Lives Matter signs, “In this house we believe…”
There was even some local “Prop 2” having something to do with preserving “open spaces” and on other signs “our farms” and my mom said her and my dad were divided on the issue, but she wasn’t sure why. But there was one thing everyone if Delmar, NY can agree upon: blowing and raking the leaves to the curb (we don’t actually have curbs in Delmar) and having them removed by a gigantic vacuum truck.
On the Town’s website they write that:
Annually we collect about 20,000 cubic yards of just loose leaves — not counting other yard debris. This is the equivalent of nearly 200,000 lawn bags and requires a major effort each fall, beginning in mid-October. Specially equipped trucks vacuum up piles of leaves placed by the roadside. It’s a labor intensive process and takes several weeks just to go through the town once, but it can take much longer depending on the accumulation of leaves and weather conditions.
Looking at the budget, the cost of this program in 2020 was a little over $1 million dollars.
Let me say first, I am sympathetic to leaf piles. I remember growing up and waiting for the leaves to fall so we could build forts, play hide and seek, throw the dog in, and fall asleep in the smell of dry leaves. The smell of dry leaves might be the most nostalgic trigger I have! It’s insane to think now with the body of a thirty year old, but I remember building piles next to the trampoline and launching off into them, doing flips and shit, again and again all fall.
But despite that, here’s the deal: in more than a handful of ways leaf removal is fucking stupid and it should stop. Or perhaps more specifically: it should be re-privatized.
First, where do leaves come from? Trees. The trees are expecting that carbon recharge. Removing the leaves severs the tree from soil. Leaves are meant to fall, decompose, and recharge the soil in the tree’s rainshadow. Removing the leaves severs the tree from the tree. It ruins the mutual ecological commitment between tree and soil. You give nutrients to my roots, I give you leaves to eat.
Second, the lawns. According to Extension schools across the country leaf removal hurts the health of the oh-so-sacred suburban turfgrass lawn. According to a group of researchers at Michigan State, when one mows leaves (“mulches”) rather than removes them:
The decomposing pieces of leaves cover up bare spots between turf plants that are an excellent opening for weed seeds to germinate. Experience has shown that nearly a 100 percent decrease in dandelions and crabgrass can be attained after adopting this practice of mulching leaves for just three years.
Researchers at University of Kentucky concur, and add that mulched leaves almost entirely offset the need for added fertilizer. They also note that mulching reduces landfill waste.
Finally, the money. The $1 million that Delmar, NY spends annually on the “Fall Leaf Pickup” program could so obviously be spent on much more important things like say, universal daycare, paying teachers a better wage, biking infrastructure, or the establishment of pollinator gardens on the margins of our roads. Whatever it is, $1 million is a lot of money to throw away at something as dumb as leaf removal.
And let me just say, I get it. It’s something people do for their own satisfaction. It’s part of the performance of being a suburbanite. It’s passed down through generations, one of the few things left that parents still ask their children to help with. It’s a little paganism in our disconnected world—contingent on the whimsy calendar of nature as opposed to our abstract lunar calendar. It’s a way to signal being a part of the culture of suburbia. It’s a way to feel like you’re taking care of your little slice of paradise.
But it’s worth pointing out, if you think you’re taking care of your trees or your lawn, you’re not…leaf raking is more about your human neighbors than your nonhuman neighbors. It’s about fitting into human culture, not about ecological care.
I don’t expect the Town of Bethlehem to stop their Fall Leaf Pickup program. It’s just not gonna happen, at least not right now. There is too much cultural inertia in the performance of being a good American suburbanite for it to stop anytime soon.
So, since there are probably no political interventions to stopping this dumbassery, the best probably intervention is to stop the inertia, which means this is all I can do: I think people who rake their leaves are not cool people. I think it is an anachronistic thing done by people who just haven’t spent anytime thinking about why they’re doing it, and that it’s bad for the trees, their lawn, and where leaf removal is a socialized program, for the town budget.
As someone who is cool and smart and whatever, who has cultural capital, I’m going to spend it here: I think you’re fucking stupid for raking your leaves. I don’t think public money should go toward something so stupid and neutral-to-bad for the environment. Leaf blowers, in particular, are super fucking annoying and when I hear one (because you can hear them from literally miles away) all I can think of is that person is probably as annoying as the sound their making.
Wait for the majority of your leaves to fall, and then use your lawn mower to shred them into your soil. It helps the trees, the grasses, and the world. That’s what cool people do. If you want leaves removed, you should pay, we should not. In small town America public money should not be used for things that are demonstrably bad, especially when every year there is such a fight over the goddamn budget.
MOW THE LEAVES!