As the colors turn and home- owners reach for the rakes, there's new satisfaction in bringing in the annual crop of fall foliage.

Seventeen years after Minnesota banned leaves from landfills, metro residents have mastered the job of leaf recycling. Most metro leaves get from yards to compost sites. Only 2 percent wind up buried with garbage.

"One of the things we can say about that ban is that it did work," said Ginny Black of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. "It turned out to be even more beneficial than we thought," because leaves buried in landfills produce hot methane gas that contributes to greenhouse gases linked to climate change.

How the recycling works and where leaves go depends on where residents live. Some cities -- including Maple Grove, Brooklyn Park and Crystal -- offer a leaf dropoff site to make it easy and affordable for residents to follow the rules. St. Louis Park and Robbinsdale contract with one hauler for curb pickup to keep the price down. Others, including Edina, Eden Prairie and Bloomington, leave it to residents to get rid of leaves through their private garbage haulers. Roseville sends a vacuum truck around the city to suck up leaves residents rake to the curb.

However it works, leaf recycling now runs like clockwork, with little government oversight.

Only one prominent issue remains: Should homeowners be permitted to use plastic bags for leaf pickup?

Plastic mixed with leaves reduces the value of the final recycling product -- compost. Rep. Paul Gardner, DFL-Shoreview, plans to address that issue at the Capitol next year. He would like to encourage the use of bags that decompose.

The decentralized and varied approach to the recycling chore developed through trial and error starting in 1990, when the state law took effect.

"Legislators didn't tell anybody where it [yard waste] was going to go. They just said where it wasn't going to go," said Ed Lynde of Lynde's Greenhouse and Nursery in Maple Grove.

The state left the solutions up to the ingenuity of local businesses and local government.

With a partner, Lynde opened one of the first private yard waste centers in Maple Grove.

Ramsey County's response to the ban was to upgrade seven informal yard waste sites and operate them as a county service to make it easy and cheap for residents to recycle, said John Springman, Ramsey's environmental health supervisor.

In contrast, Hennepin County wanted out of the leaf collecting business. "We allowed our yard waste collection system to be privatized," said Paul Kroening, Hennepin recycling coordinator. "Almost all the private haulers have provided separate yard waste collection for their customers that pay for that service."

So, where do all the leaves go?

Some cities, including Plymouth, take yard waste at small local sites. But the bulk of metro leaves go to one of 17 large compost centers that have permits from the state to run composting operations.

Plastic bags a big issue

Ten of those centers are operated by Resource Recovery Technologies (RRT), which takes leaves from most commercial haulers.

Its location in Shakopee takes in most of the leaves from area haulers that are in plastic bags.