Problem: Brighton & Hove Council have issued their street cleaners to dispose of the overflow of autumn leaves, by bagging them up in plastic bin bags to be incinerated.

Solution

Rather than collecting ALL the leaves and disposing of them, the issue could be monitored, and when they become a problem (i.e. clogging drains, covering pedestrian pavements) some of the bigger piles of leaves could instead be collected more sufficiently in large bins (i.e. recycling bins) and be taken to parks or local allotments for use as compost.

UPDATE

The council have been in touch and noted that unfortunately the leaves from the roadside cannot be used for compost because they are 'contaminated by oil'. I still believe there is a way around this issue, collecting the leaves before contamination. Plus we can still cut down on this unnecessary use of plastic! 

Personal story

I'm a local Brightonian and working professional. I personally love it when the seasons change, the roads around my area become scattered with the beautiful leaves. It made me so sad to walk out of my house one afternoon to find a street cleaner piling up masses of plastic bags filled with leaves. I questioned him, but he was just doing what the council had told him to do. He told me the bins would go where all the other rubbish goes... Since this happened I've seen more and more bin bags filled around town, they seem to be clearing up every single leaf they see! I've written a complaint to Brighton & Hove city council and am currently awaiting a response, meanwhile my posts about the leaf issues on social media have had such a good response, that I wanted to create a bigger voice to get this issue sorted....