The City of Cleveland will begin leaf pickup from tree lawns in early to mid-November and continue through the end of December. How the leaves are collected depends on what part of the city you live in.
In most areas, the city will only haul off leaves in paper lawn and leaf bags. Residents can put out up to 20 bags per week for collection on their regular trash days.
But trees are not evenly distributed in the city. In the designated “high leaf-generation areas,” the city will also collect unbagged leaves from tree lawns. Those are shown in the shaded areas on the map below.
The city’s data portal offers an interactive version of the map. Street-by-street descriptions of these pickup areas can be found on this web page. If you’re still not sure, call the city’s Division of Streets at 216-664-2150.
The city will post signs about a week before the days that a small fleet of street sweepers, leaf vacuums and other equipment will roll through to hoover up the leaves and take them to their final resting place, a composting site.
If you live in one of these areas, you can rake leaves to your tree lawn — not the street! — and leave them in piles. And if possible, avoid parking on the street on pickup day.
These areas will get two visits from the cleanup crews during November and December (in addition to bagged leaf pickup other weeks).
All city residents also have the option to “leave the leaves.” Fallen leaves provide benefits to lawns and insects, which in turn provides an excuse to just make it a spring problem. Western Reserve Land Conservancy has a comprehensive video on the subject.
For those about to rake, we leave you with an autumn haiku:
Colors in the sky
Now brown litter on my lawn
Trees can be real jerks
