I am a 40 year resident of Greensboro, NC, where we are blessed with an abundance of trees. However, this blessing also means that every fall, we are faced with a sea of leaves. For many of us in our community, bagging all these leaves is simply not feasible.

Here’s my three thoughts on why this is silly.

1) I don’t understand how it will save money. These trucks will still have to run all our streets in order to pick up leaves that the residents haven’t or can’t pick up themselves. There’s plenty of leaves falling from public areas that don’t have residents to clean them up. If the trucks will still be running how is that saving money?

2) We’re going to have to hire more garbage collectors. I can’t even begin to imagine how many more bags will be at the streets. This weekend I easily blew 75+ bags worth of leaves to the street. Now we’re supposed to place them all in paper bags? Who’s going to pick them all up? How is this not going to take more resources?

3) what about the cost of giving every single resident a brand new bin? We’re getting a third? How much money is this going to cost the city? If anyone has lived in Greensboro for as long as I have you know very well that one single bin is laughable for the amount of leaves some of us have. Why even entertain the idea of a bin? It won’t even begin to hell solve the problem but I’m sure someone is getting incredibly wealthy with this huge contract. Let’s find a better solution than scrapping the entire program. Vote here and have your voice heard

Let's stand together as a community to save our leaf collection program! Please sign this petition urging city officials to preserve this crucial service for Greensboro residents.