Jumping on the Tedwagon!

Since Nathan mentioned it, I decided to chime in with my two cents. Composting is great, I used to do it, and it works. I eventually realized that I could get rid of most, and I mean most of my yard waste by mulching alone. I recommend either using a sturdy, easily replaced ($$$) lawnmower always maintaining the blades sharp, or by using a specially designed mulching mower. This made things really easy for me when I was living in the northwest and was running out of room to compost all my grass clippings, you also need certain brown to green ratios for a healthy non smelly compost. What I eventually started to do was raking all of my browns over my lawn and immediately mulching aftwerwards (a.k.a. mow the lawn without bag on the mower). Trick is most browns (inclucing branches) have to be fresh to mulch nicely, and you have to be careful since most branches can become projectiles. It does work though, trust me, one extreme example that worked out ok for me was in Virginia after some crappy hurricane. I cut every piece of debris into small manageable pieces and mowed the lawn until everything was gone. Be really careful though since flying chunks can chip paint, break windows, and hurt Teds. This is really prevented by a nice mower, a nice healthy lawn helps catch stuff too before it goes flying.