Three Easy Steps to Composting Your Leaves This Fall

Autumn is nearly upon us and soon your trees’ leaves will be falling. It’s the perfect time to plan ahead for what you can do with those leaves that’s easy and free for residents, and best for our city and our planet.

1. Before raking up your leaves, use this coupon to pick up a pack of free compostable paper bags specifically for leaf collection. Free 5-packs of paper leaf bags are available at participating Denver-area Ace Hardware stores.

2. While you are raking up your leaves, keep an eye out for ash leaves — they are brightly-colored leaves. Use these tips to confirm whether they’re ash.

Why focus on ash leaves? Unfortunately, the threat of losing Denver’s ash trees – which make up one in six of Denver’s trees – is inching ever-nearer with the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) recently spreading to our neighbors in Arvada, Westminster, Broomfield and Larimer County. To prevent EAB from devastating Denver’s ash tree population, we need your help to keep an eye out for signs of EAB infestation and take action to protect your ash trees and our Denver urban canopy.

3. Keep your raked leaves out of the landfill and compost them for free through Denver’s LeafDrop program. Weekday sites will open to Denver residents Oct. 4. Weekend drop-off sites will open Oct. 30. Remember, when dropping off your raked leaves, use paper bags – they can also be composted!