Good Money Blog

There’s no centralized trash collection program in our city, so when we first moved in,  our subdivision referred us to two waste management companies that we could choose from. The basic trash service didn’t include yard waste collection though it could be added with an extra $10/month or $120/year (a minimum one year commitment).

As first-time house owners, we weren’t sure how much yard waste we would produce throughout a year to justify the cost, so we decided to bag all the grass clippings and leaves in those big brown recycle bags and find a place where we could drop them off. We found a large composting facility not too far from home (15 miles) that collected $1/bag of yard waste. The composted mulch from that place was later sold at local Lowe’s and Wal-Mart. The composting facility was next to a big landfill, we weren’t sure we wanted to visit it more often than we needed to. With our best efforts, we could only squeeze 6 full bags into our car each trip. Therefore, we tried to minimize the number of trips (gas, time, and hassle). One year later, we ended the trial after we’d determined that it’s not worth it. Our numbers went like this: 35 weeks/year (April-November), 2 bags or $2/week, 1 gallon or $3/round-trip. In the best case scenario, it totaled at least $105 or only $15 ahead, not to mention that we might have more than 2 bags/week or make a trip with less than 6 bags…

This year we’re happy with just putting the bags at the curb and letting the trucks pick them up every week. Now we want to go a little bit further by minimizing our bag usage. This morning, I saw nine out of ten neighbors with bagged yard waste at the curb. Although the big brown bags are made of biodegradable recycled papers, they cost at least $0.5 each at Wal-Mart. We currently have a 32-gallon wheeled waste bin just for yard waste and are looking for one more, which costs around $8. In the other words, each bin can pay itself off in a mere 4 months!

After all, I’m trying to find out if I can indeed eliminate the yard waste altogether. I’m well aware that grass clippings can serve as fertilizers if left on the grass. Grass clipping along with leaves could be composted and become mulch for flower beds. I’m just not sure if that works, so I’m going to experiment with that idea.