It is a very common practice for American household to purchase various chemicals from home improvement/garden centers. A lot of these chemicals come in big bags - like the crabgrass preventer, weed & feed chemicals, or even the top soil for the garden. Often times, these bags are throw into garbage cans.
It is also a very common practice for American household to send yard waste through refuse collectors. By buying furtiliser for your lawn, grow the lawn and, at a later day, mow the lawn and send the product to refuse just doesn't seem to be a green practice to me. By recycling the refuse in place probably is a much greener practice.
Through the years, I have been saving plastic bags that comes with my garden chemical purchases. In the fall, after leaves fell, I would collect leaves and packed them into my saved chemical bags. By packing leaves in bags and allowed them to decay through the years, these leaves turn into nutritious compost and is ready for backyard garden uses.
The following picture show the black compost that produced through this process.
