Black plastic leaf bags will soon take their leave

Saint Paul, MN -- It's a fall tradition. We stand in awe of the visual delights of autumn leaves and gird ourselves for the duties that naturally follow, i.e. raking and bagging them.  Soon those plastic leaf bags will be stacked in back alleys and street curbs.

But for most of the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area, 2009 will be the final season for those ubiquitous black plastic bags. Even those that are touted as "biodegradable" will be banned for grass clippings and leaves. 

A new law will require yard waste bags be made of compostable materials, in an effort to create an organic waste stream free of black plastic and in turn higher quality compost. In 2010 homeowners and lawn services will be expected to switch to paper leaf bags or plastic ones made of corn resin or other natural products.

"One argument against this is that you're taking away my freedom to use a black plastic bag," Rep. Paul Gardner told KARE, "But once you put it on the curb it becomes someone else's problem. And the people who deal with your problem will incur higher costs because of that plastic."

The Shoreview Democrat authored the bill, in hopes of creating a metro-wide consistent standard for composting and make that product more marketable.

"By having the compostable bags that allows everybody up and down the supply chain cleaner material and a higher value," he said, "And it passes the savings on to you."

Compostable bags are already the standard in Dakota County, and those Ramsey County residents who make use of the yard waste drop-off sites must dump out their clippings and take their bags with them.

In some areas bags are non-issue, because people can put their organic waste in reusable containers.  However, in peak times such as leaf raking season, the bags will still be a factor.

"The law just says if you use a plastic bag it has to be compostable. Every other type of container is pretty much fine."

Minneapolis will get a three-year reprieve from the new rules while the city develops a new system. In the meantime the yard waste collected by the city will continue to go to a transfer station run by Organic Technologies in North Minneapolis.

"The city and private haulers bring their bags here," Greg Austin of Organic Technologies explained, "And it goes out to be composted and then eventually sold back to the homeowners."

It comes back to them as mulch and other products sold in garden stores, or applied directly by landscaping contractors.

A machine on site rips open the black bags and spills the clippings and leaves into a pile for further processing, but eliminating that step would save composting costs as well as improving quality.

"Its going to make it easier for the hauler, everybody along the line," Austin said, "The product will be better too."

Gardner concedes the compostable bags are more pricey than the black plastic variety, but he predicted the law will drive up demand for the compostables and the price will drop as retailers stock them in larger quantities.

The price of getting your yard refuse hauled away could drop as well, according to Gardner.  He said if composters no longer had to separate black plastic from the clippings they could conceivably charge haulers less per ton, and that savings could, in theory, translate to lower hauling rates for consumers.

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