Garbage.
It's ugly, it's smelly, and every
time we look, there seems to be more of
it. As the Metroplex grows, landfills
and garbage transfer stations are
becoming overloaded, especially during
the spring and summer.
That's when bad grass clippings amount to
over 50 percent of all collected garbage.
The fact is, it's a big waste.
So last year, the Texas Agricultural
Extension Service teamed up with the city
of Plano to come up with a solution.
Residents were asked to mow their lawns
about every five or six days and to leave
the clippings in their yards.
They were also asked to fertilize and
water their lawns conservatively.
The results were excellent.
My lawn was greener.
I didn't have to fertilize
it as often.
I did not have to water as often.
I did have to mow it twice a week because
it it grew faster and you had to keep
it a little bit shorter. But the end
result was very good
and with less garbage to pick up, the
city was also a big winner.
They saved overtime pay.
Their trucks could make longer runs
and that what they normally were making,
a total saving of overtime pay, the fuel
that they saved in the neighborhood of
little over sixty thousand dollars.
They say
that's going to prolong the life of the
landfill a little bit farther.
They had to they had a reduction
of about 20 percent in the amount of
garbage bags they were picking up.