By Brian Hanley, Ph.D.
Davis is changing, and the pace is accelerating. A friend commented to me a few days ago that Davis today reminds him of Westwood, near L.A., in the 80’s. This is a pivotal time, and citizens of Davis need to decide what it is that we want to become. My background is that my first “real job” was as junior engineer for a sanitary and civil engineering firm. I drew up plans for streets, sewers, treatment plants, and did construction inspections. My doctorate is in microbiology. I am seriously concerned about global warming – par for most citizens in Davis.
This article is about the misnamed “Organics program.” This program was pushed through by a dedicated group of a few bicyclists and a committee of eco-activists. Interestingly, one of the most vocal proponents lives on an unusually large multi-acre parcel, and he will not be affected because he has space to compost everything, recycle his yard waste or burn it, and told me he plans to opt-out. We composted everything possible for several years, but ran out of space to put it when it was decomposed. Like many, we try. I think we all want to.
This Organics program is a mish-mash of apparent good intentions that doesn’t make sense and accomplishes the opposite of what it claims it will. Mostly, it was basically conceived to clear the streets of yard waste because some cyclists hate the piles. No matter that there are already city ordinances about overlarge piles of leaves and branches. No matter that those ordinances are not enforced much, but pressure could be brought to do so. Yes, I cycle in Davis a lot, including several times a week on the B Street corridor.
It is true that there are management guidelines adopted by city managers[1] that say cities should convert over to yard waste bins. As far as rationales go, that is pretty much it. Nobody has asked who put this particular guideline in, who lobbied to get that provision, nor who stands to benefit. There are two obvious parties that benefit from lack of claw service: Sellers of yard waste bins and landscape contractors. Aside from that, it’s another good excuse for cities to cut services. But let’s not dwell on that – bottom line is that saying something is in a set of guidelines for cities is no argument at all. That is sometimes called “appeal to authority,” but in this case it is just appeal to paperwork. There is no actual authority named. Those guidelines are faceless. I will show by the end that those guidelines are completely wrong, and should be revised to do the opposite.
I spent a lot of time digging into this issue. I recorded yard waste piles in the off-season. And I got DWR records for tons of yard waste removed going back years. What I found is that when you do the math and projections, this program is completely off-base.
First, let’s ask, “What is the City of Davis proposing for green waste?”
Green waste is: compostable garbage, leaves, branches, and grass clippings.
During the week beginning with the 1st Monday of each month, DWR will collect green waste placed on the street for materials that do not fit inside the cart.
Carts (bins) are either 65 gallons (10 cubic feet) or 95 gallons (14.6 cubic feet). Recently a 32 gallon (5 cubic feet) option has been added. The default is 95 gallons.
What is the bicycle advocates’ position?
“Loose waste should not be on our public streets except when it can’t be avoided – leaf drop season.” – Davis Bicycles!
“Davis does not have the resources to ensure clear bike lanes at all times, nor is there the will to provide completely effective enforcement. Waste management policy is the only way to clear the lanes.” – John Berg (Quoted from Nextdoor 2/21/2015)
Their goal is permanent elimination of claw service. All property owners will be responsible for their own yard waste. This is a large de facto property tax increase, because it eliminates a major basic service without giving back tax revenue to property owners.
I will show in graphs that the proposed policy will make bicycle safety worse. The logical conclusion is that making safety worse is desired to achieve advantage in advocating for claw elimination.
How much do yard waste piles encroach on bike lanes, and how big are these piles?
I did a survey of size in February 2015, for a 20 block area. This is considered the off-season, and that agrees with Davis Waste Removal (DWR) figures. Piles don’t create a large problem. And traffic in the city of Davis is not that heavy except downtown and on a few streets like Covell, where I have never seen any problems.
Ten percent of the piles partially block bike lanes. None of them creates anything remotely like the hazard from far more numerous cars. Anyone who bicycles on B Street is familiar with this kind of car scene.
As you can see in the yard waste volume graph, the vast majority of those piles won’t fit into the 95 gallon bins. This correlates with my experience in Marin County as a homeowner, where these bins were adopted with similar promises. The inability of green waste bins to handle clippings, brush and branches, etc, was ridiculous. It was always necessary to call a service or find a friend with a truck.
To reiterate, 10% of the piles partially block bike lanes. They create no problem remotely like the hazard from far more numerous cars, and anyone who bicycles on B Street is familiar with the traffic hazard.
As you can see in the yard waste volume graph, the vast majority of those piles won’t fit into the 95 gallon bins. This correlates with my experience in Marin County as a homeowner, where these bins were adopted with similar promises. The inability of green waste bins to handle clippings, brush and branches, etc, was ridiculous. It was always necessary to call a service or find a friend with a truck.
I was unable to find any documented cases of accidents with cyclists and yard-waste piles, only unverified reports. A young boy’s mother said he scraped his leg on a pile. After watching young boys interact with yard waste piles, I suspect that the collision was intentional, although the scrape wasn’t. Considering how protected most young boys in Davis tend to be, I might go so far as to consider yard waste piles to run over a significant perk of Davis life.
This proposal makes bike safety much worse, by creating monthly surges
Plants grow in Davis all year round. In the “slow season” 5% of the piles are leaves, the rest are brush, and branches. Under this Organics Program proposal, for 9 months of the year during collection week, will be almost 3 times what it is in the current peak season. Those weeks will be more than 4 times the current average! Volume of yard waste on the streets in April and May will be 5 times what they are now! Not only that, but unlike leaf season it will be 90% or more branches and brush.
Davis waste removal supplied yard waste in tons, and projections for once per month compression.
If the current piles are a hazard, 3-5 as many piles will be much worse for cyclists! Not only that, but all those piles will interfere with parking.
But there is another problem. In safety studies, when a hazard is routinely encountered, the frequency of accidents per encounter goes way down. When the hazard is intermittent at long intervals, accident rates go up.
Where will the new carts go and other practicalities
15,000 +/- 95 gal plastic containers @ 2.5 x 2.5 feet are ~2.15 acres of space .
Some residents will have little choice but to store the new cart on the street. We don’t have space for another bin. Nor do many others. A growing number of residents are older and find lifting into bins difficult.
There are no reflectors on the bins. Davis Bicycles has reports of bins in bike lanes already. It is common to see the gray bins on the street now, also without reflectors. Of course, it is true that too many Davis residents bicycle at night without lights or reflectors of any kind. It seems fashionable. I was just noting the large number of bicycles downtown last night, and several black bikes with students on them wearing black clothes and black caps, and no helmets. I can only hope they bounce well.
Eliminating claw service wildly increases carbon footprint by 100 times
Just like trains are far more efficient per passenger mile, the same is true of trucks. If claw service is eliminated, based on the approximately 15,000 homes in Davis in 2014, that should mean between 5,000 and 10,000 trips to the dump every month in small trucks or car trailers. That is far less efficient than 15-30 trips using dedicated trucks.
Doing the math on those figures shows that any purported greenhouse gas cut that could possibly be achieved from the compostables diversion is hugely outweighed by the CO2 increase from more trips to the dump. Using EPA figures, 1 gallon of gasoline burned = 8.87 kilograms of CO2. If it is a 20 mile round trip to Woodland, and the average car or truck gets 25 mpg, then each trip produces a bit over 7 kg of CO2.
But with 15,000 homes in Davis, we have added 5,000 – 10,000 trips to the dump. That is 35,000 – 70,000 kg of CO2 each month from these small vehicles.
A large dumptruck gets around 6 mpg and burns diesel. Diesel produces 10.18 kg of CO2 per gallon. So in a dumptruck, that same trip to the dump produces 34 kg of CO2. Multiply that by 15-30 trips and you have 510 – 1,020 kg of CO2 per month to dump yard waste.
In other words, Davis Waste Removal’s carbon footprint for yard waste removal is 1% of what a combination of private lawn services and citizens can do it for.
Conclusion
A sane and sensible look at the numbers says that the city management guidelines should be revised. Instead of playing let’s pretend and fobbing off real costs onto property owners, while worsening the climate problem, cities should do everything possible to pick up yard-waste and dispose of it efficiently. City waste services should be trying to handle more, not less. Compostable paper plates and table scraps are nothing by comparison to the cost of many small trips to the dump. It makes no sense to spend resources chasing tiny improvements while creating vastly larger increases.
The weekly claw makes ecological and safety sense. We need to keep it.
[1] . Per verbal report at Davis City Council meeting. I have not seen these guidelines, but I have no reason to doubt them.
You can’t convert zealots with reason and evidence. These are the same points I made, trying to inject a little common sense into the discussion, only to be told how stupid I was for suggesting that a 95 gallon container full of wet greenwaste was substantial threat to safety than a leaf pile. They were all to ready to pay for the can vendor’s Hawaiian vacation.
I don’t think I know the author so there must be at least one other person making the same Westwood analogy I have been making but I think of Davis as more like Westwood in the 60’s before it started going up, alienating this misanthropic youth, and, driving him out of the Southland to the open spaces up north. The irony is that all the suburban refugees from so cal with their dogged opposition to the”sprawl” that provided them with shelter and a safe place to grow up are going to repeat the mistake that West L.A. made in Westwood by allowing infill and densification to ruin downtown Davis.
I also agree that the green waste bin move is dumb and as the author shows counterproductive policy.
Recently, I severely trimmed some large trees in my backyard. The cut branches extended up and down the street, and required two weekly pickups before all of it was removed. (I checked with the neighbors, before I did this.) My house is located on a quiet street, with very little bicycle (or other) traffic.
I severely trimmed these trees now, because I knew this change was coming. Unfortunately, it is the last time that I will be able to do this.
As a result, the yard and house will now be exposed to much more sunshine in the afternoon, most likely causing the PG&E bill to rise (to cool the house), and requiring more water usage to keep the remaining plants alive.
My trees do not fully lose their leaves until January (after the weekly pickups will end each year). It is difficult to trim them, before they lose their leaves.
I don’t see this program as an overall improvement, to say the least. It discourages homeowners from having large trees, which provide much-needed, “environmentally-friendly” shade.
I feel sorry for your trees.
There are some fine arborists in the area who would have done the pruning job correctly, and if you wished, left you with a load of wood chip mulch that you could have used around your yard. Probably would have cost you less than the increase in your pg&e and water bills. Rake up the leaves and use them as mulch around your other plants, or make a 4’x4′ pile in the corner of your yard and allow them to decay and use in your garden. No reason for any of the material to leave your property. Recycling in place will reduce your need for fertilizer and water while making your soil and plants healthier.
Mark:
No need to feel “sorry” for my trees. I did hire an arborist to cut the branches off, this time. (I did the removal.) However, I’ve also trimmed them myself in the past, and they’ve continued to thrive.
I did this to save money. It was already quite expensive, just to have the branches cut off.
I already compost much of the leaves, etc. However, the branches (even chipped) would overwhelm the yard (and would greatly increase expense).
I understand that the city composts yard waste that’s picked up by the claw.
Heavy-duty cutting (or outright removal) does reduce shade, thereby increasing energy usage (to cool the house), and requiring more water usage to keep remaining plants alive. It also makes the yard more inhospitable, during summer months.
I suspect that some neighbors/residents will ultimately reduce the amount of large trees, as a result of the new program.
Perhaps it’s fortunate that newer housing has almost entirely eliminated yards. (I say this with some sarcasm.)
One thing I do like about the new program is that it will apparently allow residents to put some food waste directly into the bins (that might otherwise go to the landfill). Although I compost food waste, not everyone is willing to take the time to do this.
If they just extended the weekly street pickups through the end of January, I’d be satisfied.
Brian wrote:
> Killing the Claw – Worse Bike Safety, and 100
> Times Higher Carbon Footprint
As a bike commuter I have yet to meet a single bike rider that likes the fact that Davis residents (and gardeners) dump yard waste in the street and in bike lanes.
It looks like Brian is in the small minority of people who likes the challenge of riding around the piles of yard waste (mountain bike riding in the city).
I was trying to figure out how cutting the number of vehicles picking up yard waste in half was going to increase carbon emissions by 100x when I read that Brian is also in the small minority of people that assumes almost 7 in 10 home owners will be driving to the dump once a month.
South of Davis:
I can see how this would be a problem on streets with heavy bicycle traffic. But, I don’t think it’s a major problem on quieter streets. In those cases, I think the benefit outweighs the drawbacks.
Not sure of the best solution.
the benefit of what outweighs the drawbacks? on windy days, debris goes flying. i’m sure we can’t catalog the extend of the problem, but we haven’t even implemented the solution yet.
DP:
The benefits that I’ve described in my posting, above. (Encouraging homeowners to have large shade trees, to help reduce energy usage for cooling, and reduce water usage as a result of having more shade for remaining plants.) And, encouraging use of backyard activity, which benefits from having large shade trees.
As I mentioned, I’ve greatly reduced the amount of shade-producing foliage in my yard, in preparation for the lack of weekly pickups (during tree-trimming season).
Actually DP, that is not true. El Macero has implemented the solution of green cans for 20 years without any noticeable problems. They go out on the street the same day as the other two DWR cans.
most of the state has implemented it for decades without problems, but we’re davis, we romanticize the claw.
El Macero is a housing development where the average residential lot is 1/4 acre. And many of the residents have more than one green waste bin. No problem finding a place to store them. But more importantly, it is a high-income neighborhood where most of the residents pay for yard service to have their green waste carted away.
The rest of Davis not so much.
Ironically due to the very same people demanding green waste containers rejecting peripheral expansion and that the city continue its trend toward urban density. Residential land prices are so high that the trend is to try and cram reasonable-sized homes on tiny lots. And so the space in those tiny lots is at a premium for gardens. And these activists say that we should basically allow the city to loot some of that precious space to store one of their ugly 95 gallon cans made out of petroleum products.
I call BS on this claim by the bike activists. I ride and the green waste piles are a de minimis issue related to bike safety. B street is a great example of how the road can be stripped to accommodate all the traffic and the green waste piles.
>> B street is a great example of how the road can be stripped to accommodate all the traffic and the green waste piles.
What’s that again? B Street does not allow ANY green waste piles on the street. Containers only. Just like on 5th Street and part of 8th. If you like how B Street is working (or 5th or 8th), then it may be time to change your take on all this.
>> most of the state has implemented it for decades without problems, but we’re davis, we romanticize the claw.
In fact I moved to Davis from Marin (same as the author did). And seeing all the trash stored on the street every day of the week (especially the putrid grass piles), and NOT having the convenient option of a green waste container was somewhat high on my list of what I missed about living in Marin. Shockingly… before we received our bins in Marin, we were responsible for taking care of our own waste – we weren’t dependent on the home owners with small yards to subsidize those of us with big yards.
As I recall, B Street was striped before the CC voted to force place ugly plastic bins on those residents. And since I ride that road every time I ride a bike to and from work, I am 10000000% sure that there is no material difference in bike safety from when organic green piles were allowed, and when the ugly bins made out of petroleum products were forced.
Darelidd:
That is a legitimate point. However, large trees can also help shade neighbors’ yards and houses. (Some may prefer this, some may not.)
One of my neighbors mentioned that she is thinking of cutting down some trees that block a lot of the afternoon sun on my house/property. I hope that she doesn’t follow-through on this. Even though these trees are rather far from my property, it’s amazing how much unwanted afternoon sunlight they block, during the hottest part of the summer.
>> I am 10000000% sure
Clearly you have the strength of reality and science on your side. There’s no way that I can argue with 10 million % assurance. 🙂
Ron – see Don Shor at Redwood barn for some containerized bamboo ideas for shade that would remain in your own yard.
Relying on your neighbors trees for shade is not a good idea.
Frankly:
Thanks for the suggestion. But, containerized bamboo would not provide anywhere near the amount of shade that a medium/large tree does (for the house and yard). Not even close.
I’m not “relying” upon the neighbor. She will ultimately do what’s best for herself. However, my larger point is that the changes in this program will probably result in a reduction of shade trees in backyards throughout Davis. (As maintenance expense rises, more residents will question the value of having trees.)
Of course, one can question the value of having shade trees (problems, vs. benefits). But, in an area that has hot summers (such as Davis), I think that the benefits usually outweigh the drawbacks. And, the changes in this program discourage homeowners from having shade trees.
Again, if the weekly pickups were extended through the end of January, it would make a big difference. (An additional 3 weeks’ extension, since there’d already be a weekly street pickup at the beginning of the month.)
There are lots of small- to medium-sized trees that will do the job and not require pruning once established. Strategic placement in the landscape is the key for shading.
Ron wrote:
> However, large trees can also help shade neighbors’
> yards and houses. (Some may prefer this, some
> may not.) One of my neighbors mentioned that she
> is thinking of cutting down some trees that block a
> lot of the afternoon sun on my house/property.
Since Marin and El Macero have MORE trees per acre than Davis maybe Ron and his neighbor are the exception and we will have hundreds of others plant trees since they now have a bin to put the leaves and don’t have to make a mess in the street every time they rake…
This is not just about bicycle safety. There are many in town who wish to limit the blight of 24/7/365 piles of waste on our streets. There are many others with small yards who no longer wish to subsidize those with large yards.
What amuses me most is how many people in town complain about limited parking space… and then happily pile green waste at the curb in… parking spaces.
Darell – you and others really need to get off this fake canard about the green waste piles being so damn ugly.
Correct me if I am wrong, but green waste is natural, biodegradable, happens all the time in nature, is basically the same stuff we think is beautiful and desired in our yards and gardens just lying down in the street.
Trees shed their leaves. Those damn trees… how dare they? We should chop them all down for having the audacity to drop their ugly bio mess on those pristine bike-friendly streets! Do you really want to make a case that a neat pile of those leaves along the street is ugly? And that a long line of 95 gallon containers made of petroleum products is attractive?
Give me a break… (or a brake on my bike so I don’t run into any of those ugly plastic containers).
Fake canard? That would be a rumor that’s accurate?
It turns out that you’re not the final word on what is attractive and what isn’t. I’m happy that you are not bothered by the piles of (often) fetid, though very natural! trash being stored in the street. Some of us are.
My kitchen scraps are totally natural as well. Are you OK with me throwing those out on the street? It would be quite convenient for me. And then there’s my dog’s poop. She’s fed organically, so totally natural there as well.
You aren’t implying that all green piles are all neatly placed, are you? I know that you place yours neatly. But it turns out that there are more people in this town than you. And some of them don’t give a damn. Maybe a percentage of your angst could be directed at them.
Yes, “fake canard” really means nothing. So in that respect it was accurate.
Your points about kitchen scraps, dog stuff and neat piles… those are things that can be dealt with by ordinance and by some neighborhood policing.
Brian (who probably does not go to the dump much) also writes:
> is hugely outweighed by the CO2 increase
> from more trips to the dump.
> If it is a 20 mile round trip to Woodland
It is less than a 10 mile round trip to the dump from Wildhorse and it is less than a 20 mile round trip from the SW corner of West Davis…
Bravo. Fantastic article.
I think that Davis is one of just a tiny number of cities in CA that still allow residents to throw their green waste in the street. Brian’s take on this issue would be better informed if he included the experiences of the vast majority of California cities that already containerize their green waste
Indeed. It would also be better informed if there was any consideration that the amount of green waste generation is not a static situation. The logic that the amount of green waste produced by a given yard will be constant is the same as assuming that if we had a draught that we’d never be able to cut back on water usage. Or that if the price of gas went up to $5 that we’d never be able to drive less, or more efficiently.
I didn’t live in Marin but I did live in a remote area of the Willamette Valley in Oregon. 20 years ago I had to tote my own garbage to the landfill. I agree with you -it is not fair to charge people who have no trees for the disposal of tree trimmings. I also think it would be nice if bike riders were allowed to use the sidewalk. When my kids were younger, I advised them to stay on the sidewalk & I’d risk a ticket. Neither one of them was ever cited. Perhaps the cops have an understanding that younger bike riders who aren’t riding too quickly should remain on the sidewalk? Perhaps every street should be painted with fluorescent green bike lanes, in addition to a spot to place garbage & recycle bins. I like the bike paths in Holland. I felt very safe there. In Davis, towards the end of my residency there, I didn’t feel safe riding my bike & I constantly worried about my kids riding theirs. The community where I now reside has walking/non-motorized bike trails. It’s nice, but it does not cover the entire town.
I suppose one could argue that it’s also not fair to give tax breaks to those who have children (thereby shifting taxes to those who do not have children). Or, one could argue that those same children (later) help support those who do not have children, via social security/Medicare.
Hope I didn’t open a whole “can of worms” with those comments. But, I guess my point is that taxes do not perfectly correspond with services provided. (Something like that.)
2cowherd:
Davis is still going to have weekly street pickups using the claw (during the shortened “leaf-drop” season), and monthly pickups during other times. Woodland (and, I believe – Sacramento) have similar programs. So, it is not going away, totally.
My only real complaint is that the weekly street pickups end too soon (in December), rather than extending through January (the best month for heavy-duty tree trimming).
>> the hazard from far more numerous cars, and anyone who bicycles on B Street is familiar with the traffic hazard.
1. If car traffic is so hazardous, why are you a proponent of forcing cyclists out of bike lane and into the traffic lane?
2. If you are going to use statements and pictures to make your point, you may want to use ones that are both current and correct. Parking in the bike lane is no longer allowed on B Street. So now that we’ve fixed the most hazardous situation, it is time to move onto the next one down the list.
Don:
I would definitely have to defer to you, regarding appropriate landscaping trees.
My yard was professionally landscaped, but with medium/large trees. (Not sure of the category of ornamental pears, etc.) Many of my neighbors yards also have such trees – including redwoods. I guess we’d all have to “start over”, partly as a result of the changes in the weekly pickup schedule.
Although you’re the expert, I’m somewhat doubtful that smaller/medium trees (that don’t require pruning) can ever provide as much shade. There are benefits and drawbacks to having medium/large trees.
I got along just fine, up until now. (I responded to any concerns of neighbors, as well.) However, there (now) will no longer be weekly pickups during the primary month (January) for pruning. (I suspect that trimming of trees can never be totally eliminated.)
I wouldn’t even be “weighing in” on this, if they extended the proposed weekly pickup schedule for another 3 weeks (during January). (It seems that there would already be a pickup during the first week.)
I think weekly pickup should be extended through the dormant pruning season, which would be through at least mid February.
I have had more negative feedback from my customers on this city policy change than any other I can think of. And that includes feedback from very ‘green’ folks who are active gardeners. I also remember how my elderly mother tried to deal with this when they enacted it in San Diego, and how the yard debris backed up until she and the gardening service could fit it into the dumpster (which she couldn’t maneuver in her later years).
The bins should be voluntary. Pickup season may need to be extended. A lot of people may be just fine with them; they’ll be ok for lawn clippings, and light leaf debris and trimmings.
But on the other hand, lawn clippings and raked leaves really don’t need to be taken off site; they can compost in place, or be spread out in other parts of the yard. There could definitely be an educational component of this policy to reduce the total amount of yard material being put out in the first place.
“There are two obvious parties that benefit from lack of claw service: Sellers of yard waste bins and landscape contractors. Aside from that, it’s another good excuse for cities to cut services. But let’s not dwell on that – bottom line is that saying something is in a set of guidelines for cities is no argument at all. That is sometimes called “appeal to authority,” but in this case it is just appeal to paperwork. There is no actual authority named. Those guidelines are faceless.”
Excellent article. The excerpt above is not only of essential importance to understanding the current issue, but also description of the real basis for much government action.
I like that old bumper sticker I used to see around sometimes, “Question Authority.”
I completely agree with this article and say, “Save the Claw”! Adding thousands of more huge plastic bins which will not be able to handle the tree and shrub pruning waste, will just make the bike lanes more of an obstacle course. As a resident of a townhouse in a higher density neighborhood, where is a THIRD huge trash bin supposed to be stored? Also, my tiny “garden yard” has absolutely NO space for a “compost pile”. This is what comes as part of higher density housing. I accepted limitations of having a very small lot when I purchased my townhouse in my higher density neighborhood which did not plan for this or even for recycling bins.
Furthermore, how many gardeners enjoy collecting all their yard plantings clipping and then having to lift them off the ground into a bin that may or may not entirely fit? What do you do when your clippings don’t fit? What do you do then then? Pile them around the bin until next weeks pick up? Well that creates even MORE of a problem then what we have now for the bicyclists. I mean really, come on…
The City can not afford to lose the claw pickup particularly if it wants to encourage and support having our wonderful trees, shrubs and perennials which need plenty of pruning on a regular basis too. All of these wonderful plantings help protect our planet and we need to continue supporting pruning them to manage them.
The bicycle enthusiasts need to realize that they need to share the roads. What about the “green and sustainability” community and the gardeners wanting to keep plants and trees healthy to help with reducing our carbon footprint?
I concur with the article as well.
Storing yet another plastic bin that doesn’t always fit the shape of the yard waste it’s supposed to contain does not appeal. And while I honor our town’s biking culture, I don’t think it’s fair that all other amenities should give way to incrementally further the ease of those who choose to cycle (BTW, I cycle as well, and have yet to feel endangered by excessive yard waste piles.. but then again, I don’t cycle drunk any more). I live on a wide street with almost no traffic, and outside of a very few arteries in town, I can’t even conceive of how the occasional yard waste pile poses a mortal danger.
I beautify my neighborhood by keeping large trees and many plantings. I reduce energy use by strategically planting to produce shade in summer. Sometimes during pruning season I’ve got a lot of yard “waste” (and no, I don’t have the $ to just hire an arborist and a crew to haul everything away or chipper everything into bin-friendly chunks), and I need more space than a container provides. Some weeks I’ve got no yard “waste.” The amount my yard produces evens out, in that some weeks I have more than container’s worth, and some weeks I’ve got less… the claw’s flexibility is a necessity for many, including me.
Yes, save the Claw!
I’m a regular daily bike commuter across several miles of Davis cutting thru the central Davis area (and also regularly ride thruout much of the rest of Davis for excercise), and the leaf piles have never been a significant concern/hazard for me (though I am not a competitive class biker). I kind of like seeing them there; like the sight & smell of fresh leaves and grass clippings especially. Why this anal-retentive move to compartmentalize everything?–save the claw! (And for a later article, ban leafblowers!)
Yeah, Amen thanks for writing this. The waste bins are a sham, and the monthly pickup only means the piles will sit there much longer. The bins at my mom’s house in the Bay Area never held enough and were an ass-pain to fill when branches were involved — damn near impossible.
I ran into piles once or twice with my bike at night. My bike is well lit but don’t have a beam. Few people have beams and we all should. That’s the bike’s fault if it runs into a pile. Buy a beam flashlight or ride slower.
Save the Claw! Ban the Bins!