READING, Pa. – Starting Monday, Public Works crews will be out across Reading collecting piles of leaves from sidewalks and curbs.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur yards are too small to self-compost all the leaves, so we offer a collection program,\u201d said Bethany Ayers, sustainability manager for the City of Reading.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a full operation aimed at keeping storm drains clear and preventing flooding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they’re on the sidewalks or in the streets, they can make it really slippery, especially when we’re getting rain like we’re expecting this weekend,\u201d Ayers explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can also clog our storm drains, which can lead to surface flooding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crews will be out from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, with three to four trucks making several passes through city neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the leaf pile collection, we ask that there’s no sticks, no plastic litter, and no grass clippings,\u201d Ayers said.<\/p>\n
The city is also reminding residents to use paper bags instead of plastic to prevent contamination.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sticks can damage the equipment, and the plastic pollution or litter can end up contaminating the compost,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Once collected, the leaves are reused, helping cover landfill areas and serving other environmental purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a city of trees,\u201d Ayers said. \u201cWe’ve been an Arbor Day Tree City for about 40 years. It really helps with our air quality and controls the heat in the summer. But in the fall, we have a little bit of cleanup to do, and that\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – Starting Monday, Public Works crews will be out across Reading collecting piles of leaves from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1266,1268,28,736,128,130,129,1267],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-bethany-ayers","tag-leaf-collection","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-sustainability-manager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}