Our streets team can collect 10 tonnes of leaves every day during autumn - that's around the same weight as two fully grown elephants!
Leaves collected in our parks and open spaces are composted. The leaves collected on roads and streets cannot be composted because they get contaminated by oil, debris and rubbish.
These leaves are not landfilled but taken to the Energy Recovery Facility and burned with other waste, generating power to fuel 22,000 homes.
We collect the contaminated leaves in plastic bags as other bags made of paper, for instance, would disintegrate as the leaves are normally wet. We will soon be looking at alternatives to plastic bags.
A recent online petition claims we should leave piles of leaves on our streets and pavements until they 'become a problem'.
However, a build-up of leaves on our roads and streets can be extremely dangerous to traffic and pedestrians - especially the frail and elderly, wheel chair users, parents with prams and buggies, and young children. Therefore this is not a solution.
As a responsible council we take many other factors into consideration when making leaf collections.