Leaves that drop from trees in autumn are an abundant source of compostable material, but too often they end up in the landfill where they don’t serve any purpose.
Through a partnership between the city of Durango and Table to Farm Compost, environmentally wise residents can take advantage of a free on-demand composting collection service geared toward putting autumn leaves to use.
Monique DiGiorgio, Table to Farm co-owner and managing member, said the new leaf pickup program was tested during the city’s annual Fall Cleanup in 2023, but it returns this year as a full-fledged, separate program.
In 2023, the city purchased 1,500 bags that were distributed to residents free of charge at the recycling center (up to 10 bags per resident), she said. The bags were collected by city crews during their regular Fall Cleanup schedule and left at Table to Farm’s facility.
She said the city collected about 1,000 30-gallon bags, the equivalent of about 150 cubic yards of un-compacted leaves, from about 1,500 households over a four-week period, not including other organic materials such as tree limbs.
But the pilot collection program, while it indicated many residents are interested in composting their leaves, strained Fall Cleanup crew capacity. And she said the amount of collections was restrained by the Fall Cleanup schedule. Feedback from residents showed the Fall Cleanup schedule did not always align with when their leaves started to actually fall.
This year, the city won’t be collecting leafage on its Fall Cleanup route. Instead, Table to Farm will offer collection services on-demand. Anyone who pays a utility bill qualifies, DiGiorgio said. This time, the onus is also on residents to get their own paper bags.
She said any paper bags purchasable at Kroeger’s Ace Hardware, City Market or Walmart will do. However, the city stipulates in a news release plastic bags or bags with plastic linings will not be accepted and recommends 30-gallon compostable paper leaf bags.
“Since the leaves fall off the trees in a variety of ways and times throughout the city of Durango, instead of having a kind of canned zone structure, what we’re asking people to do is … sign up at tabletofarmcompost.com, and then we’ll know that you’re ready for us to come by,” she said.
Existing Table to Farm customers can simply log into their existing customer portal and signal they are ready for leaf pickup from there.
“It’s really important that people … know that this is available, so we can try to make sure all that organic matter goes back into the soil instead of to the Bondad landfill,” she said.
She added that diverting compostable materials from the landfill is what the program is all about.
The city and Table to Farm entered a five-year partnership to strive for the goal of achieving communitywide composting by 2025 or 2026.