rosegal, It depends on what you are trying to grow in the bed. If its vegetables or something annual that you will transplant in, the mat formed by the unshredded leaves will still retain moisture and break down to feed your plants. Or if its seeds the mat can be parted in rows for planting. The leaves should be effective in limiting weed growth where they cover the soil. You could also create a leaf-mold bin, a big pile of leaves (potentially contained by wood or wire) that you leave for a couple years to turn into beautiful and nutrient rich planting material. If you have tons of leaves you could get a big leaf shredder/chipper. I got one from Lowes once I figured out that noone else in town wants to keep their leaves. Its more work, but it makes really nice fluffy leave mulch for around my roses and to cover my beds for next year. As for the bad bugs, I would expect that the additional organic matter, stabler soil temperatures, and more constant moisture in your newly leaf-mulched beds will help your plants withstand most bad bug assaults. Remaining bad bug problems will be dealt with by the other wildlife that moves into the more hospitable leaf-mulched environment. Just my thoughts on leaves. Hope it helps. -Kyle

We live in the country, too. There is a weekly trash pick up service in our area, but we don't use it. It takes us a month or two to fill a single 30 gallon trash bag. When one is full, I take it to the trash & recycling drop off and pay a by-the-bag fee that is probably one tenth the cost of the pickup service. I have made a concerted effort to stay off mailing lists, and we still get plenty of junk mail, which we shred. We have poor soil, so the shreds get sprinkled wherever we need the organic matter the most. I'd rather compost than burn. Yeah, I admit, sometimes it looks like confetti on our lawn, but the lawn is getting thicker! We compost vegetable scraps from the kitchen, autumn leaves, etc. As for cans and bottles, we recycle everything possible. Only non-recyclable plastic and meat bones find their way into our trash can, even with all the decluttering I'm doing with the help of FlyLady. Household items that are useful to someone else go to the Re-Use It Center, or I Freecycle them on the front porch. At first, I used a couple of cardboard boxes for the recyclable materials. But leaking liquids made them messy. So I replaced them with clear plastic bins that could be washed. I measured the shelf in the garage where we keep the recycle bins. I went to two or three stores that had a good selection of plastic storage containers. I used my measuring tape to be sure that whatever I got would fit into my space. I only need two boxes. One is for styrofoam, which shares space with a bundle of #2 & #4 plastic bags. (The bags are easy to pull out at the recycle place.) The other box holds cans, recyclable plastic & glass, which is how my local recycle place wants everything sorted. I also got a smaller box with a snap-tight lid. The mice chew aluminum foil and make a mess, but with the lid, I can keep foil out in the garage with the rest of the recycle stuff. When I have trash and/or recycling, I drive it over to the place which is also conveniently near some of the stores I need to visit anyway. I can combine my errands and save gas. It works out well for me. MaryLiz

"Greeniness" of granite, recycled glass, and other countertops. 1. The huge amount of resources to extract natural substances from the earth. 2. The environmental damage in extracting substances from the earth. 3. The power to transport heavy, huge slabs to a warehouse to be prepared for shipping. 4. Shipping. 5. More transportation to a new, main warehouse in the country. 6. More transportation to warehouse hubs, to be wholesaled. 7. Power to prepare rough slabs for wholesale. 8. Power to hone rough slabs to be shown in retail stores. 9. More transportation to retail warehouses/locations. Transportation to consumers' homes. Power to fabricate slabs for consumer's homes. Ability to be recycled, or does the slab end up in a landfill. These things are involved in granite. Granite is beautiful, and I may get granite. But let's not equate granite with recycled countertops that will, in the end, be recycled again, and again, and again, and never end up in a landfill or cause environmental damage. Enviroglass is manufactured in my city, which is a good "green" advantage. All the power required for all that transportation noted above....not needed for enviroglass. Or concrete, for that matter, since that is made locally. The deal with concrete countertops, which are not by definition green, is that (according to one show I saw) they are usually made locally. So there is no transportation involved, to speak of. But unless it can be recycled, I don't know if this is a big enough green advantage. Still, the guy on the show acted as if the power to transport is a huge consideration (I guess because of the weight of concrete, in part). No man-made or fabricated substance is perfect. They all use power. They all do some damage. They all have drawbacks in their use, too (even granite cracks). But it seems to me that if something is renewable, that would be a flag that it is likely to be the "greenest" of the items. Maybe not, but it just seems common sense to me that if you can use an item, and re-use, and re-use it, then it is the greenest. Add to that any product that is locally made and requires little transportation, and voila, that would be the greenest. Seems to me, anyway. Maybe granite can be recycled? I don't know. I don't know why not. It can't be melted down, but it can be re-fabricated for a smaller countertop, I would think. Lots to think about.

And stonetech, while I'm fairly cynical about things touted as green, and don't expect all recycling is collected and reused in an ideal manner (local recycler's fine print reads that they may "reject" -- ie dump -- any loads that are not acceptable at their discretion), I do think the effort is worth it. All local trash is incinerated, so even if only some is diverted, recycling has a chance to be the better option here. Arguments about the costs of such services, about what's greenwashing, about consumerism in general, about the global commodities markets and the economics of the waste business... all are topics worth thinking about, but that may be beyond the scope of this forum...