Great. Last year I shredded my leaves with a Husqvarna blower/Shredder and dumped them into a pile in the woods. I had forgotten all about them.
Along with everything you get from wood mulch, leaves provide a lot more nutrition, including ample slow release nitrogen.
Yes, here people throw them away. I can get as much as I want. Although last year people were putting garbage in the yard waste bags hidden in the leaves. Some people!! I use them for mulch on all my beds, and to cover my blackberries in the winter. So far I have been unable to obtain wood chips.
Speedster, we, too, have a blower/vacuum shredder and under my wood chip/bark mulch is a layer of shredded leaves. We donât have much grass due to watering issues (rather water my fruit trees than a ridiculously water-intensive lawn). We recycle all our our vacuumed leaves into planter mulch. I would ask for my lawn clippings from the gardener, but they use their own lawn mowers, which bring in other peopleâs weed seeds. Bad enough in my lawn, and donât want that in my beds. Hate weeding. Up there with washing windows and ironing in detestable tasks. 
I use the red, I think it looks nice, but I agree itâs not very natural looking, but then again manicured trees and shrubs donât really look natural anyway. I wonder if the red color has growing benefits for plants since red film under tomatoes has been shown to increase growth.
Anyone ever seen this guyâs video? His opinion is its not the color thatâs the problem, itâs the fact that itâs pretty much all wood derived from wooden pallets. He really like hardwood bark mulch because it actually adds nutrients. Heâs not a fan of utility company chips and he says packaged compost can sometimes have human sewage waste in it 
What Mulch Is Best: https://youtu.be/rYxM6SrElZY
Well if it has human waste it has to be marked! I use human waste on my lawn myself. Itâs cheap and I donât care much about the lawn. I agree hardwood bark is very rich but it will only last a season. Maybe 2, I use it from my wood pile, I would not buy it. I tend to feed my plants, but not with mulch, I want long lasting mulch, not as a source of nutrients, but to conserve water.
Most of the colored wood is made from pallets from China.
There is a range in the quality of wood chips. The smaller the branches the more nutrients and hardwood has more nutrients than soft and supposedly takes somewhat longer to decompose. It doesnât matter where the wood in pallets comes from- wood is wood, but according to unreliable sources (the internet) pallets are made from soft wood (pine). Iâm sure whatever it is it is from large wood.
Here we have local manufacturers of product that is made from arborist chips. It is nice to know where your mulch comes from and this is what I use if I canât get chips delivered directly from the arborist.
Speed,
Here is another article from Linda Chalker Scott. She indicates arborist wood chips are superior to bark mulch in supporting diverse of soil biota, water holding capacity and weed control. Nothing mentioned of nutrient value.
I donât know how remedial wood chips (i.e. arborist chips) compare to bark mulch in fertilizer value. It would be interesting to see that analysis.
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When I was 17 I worked at a place that made pallets, we sometimes used treated wood, It depended on what they were used for. To keep bugs out we used methyl bromide. God only knows what they do in China. I heard they make good drywall though! 
I found this on the net
Exposure to Methyl Bromide, one of the most popular pesticides used in pallets, has been connected to severe neurological disorders. Wood pallets used in childrenâs furniture are also a breeding ground for dangerous bacteria. The National Consumer League found that ten percent of all the wood pallets they tested contained E. coli, and three percent tested positive for Listeria, a deadly disease that is fatal thirty percent of the time it is contracted.
Have fun with those wood chips!
Probably mostly because bark contains more chemical resistance to decomposition and repels water due to itsâ relatively high content of suberin.
Drew,
Methyl bromide is extremely lethal. It is so lethal, it pretty much kills all biologic life (except fungus). However, as you know, itâs a gas and dissipates very rapidly leaving no residue. In order to keep it in the soil, strawberry growers have to put a tarp over the fumigated soil. It basically sterilizes the soil, but then completely dissipates. It is useful to strawberry growers because it kills harmful nematodes, making it safe to replant their strawberry fields.
Itâs also used on wood pallets and food. It has been used on wood pallets to stop the spread of introduced pests (i.e. various wood borers) traveling from one country to the next.
My understanding is that methyl bromide can no longer be used on dry cured hams, or strawberry fields after 2015. Itâs under a program to be phased out because of its ozone depleting capabilities.
It is very lethal in itâs gaseous state, but whatever was fumigated is completely safe once the gas dissipates. I think it would be the equivalent of fumigating something with chlorine or fluorine gas, which as you know in the same family as bromine. Very deadly while the gas is present, but completely safe after the gas is gone.
I wouldnât pay much mind to the fact that wood chips contain E. coli or Listeria. These are both ubiquitous in the soil anyway. Since the wood chips go on the soil, I doubt their bacterial count is much different than other natural biodegradable matter (i.e. leaf litter, etc.) or the soil itself.
I could be wrong, but my guess is the National Consumer League is a bit alarmist. There are a lot of alarmist organizations using the internet these days.
You may have a point about Chinese wood pallets (i.e. not knowing what theyâve been treated with). Something on the news the other day that something imported from China had to be recalled. I canât remember what it was this time. Maybe lead paint again?
Good lord, I just watched the mother of all mulch conspiracy videos. haha. This guy will have you terrified to mulch your plants. I guess gravel is the only option left. 
Well for whatâs it worth we built new and repaired used pallets, and the equipment we used was old and half broken, liquid was all over the place.
Luckily I had nothing to do with that. I built glass boxes to haul windshields for the automotive plants. Completely untreated wood. All the same Iâll skip the wood mulch from pallets. Oils, heavy metals, and god only knows what chemicals were hauled on them, etc no thanks.
And I was making a joke about the drywall. Drywall from China is absolutely worthless besides being poisonous.
So you feel E coli and Listeria are ok around food crops?
(Note to self, donât buy any caramel apples from olpea)
Speedster, all I can think of is the decorative stone industry financed the silly thing. Notice all those terrible dangers are not enforced with one iota (what is an iota anyway) of data.
According to the video everything sucks if it isnât stone, which is extremely heavy and does not feed the soil or serve as a reservoir. However, Iâm thinking of using quartz mulch over fabric for a few of my nectarine trees to offer up reflected light and create a near permanent non-excessively invigorating weed barrier. .
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Quartz contains silica dust a known carcinogen, use a mask when working with if any dust forms.
Not much difference between silica and asbestos,
Something on the news the other day that something imported from China
had to be recalled. I canât remember what it was this time. Maybe lead
paint again?
Hardwood flooring from Lumber Liquidators and formaldehyde content. And I agree, I make very careful decisions about using any products from China. Would never ever consider using wood chips from palettes coming from China.
Drew, donât worry, Olpea is right, any small amount of either of these anaerobic organisms would be dissipated in the soil, or killed outright by competing good soil microbes.
Patty (RN)
Everything has itâs issuesâŚeverything. I for one, wouldnât hesitate to use any of these mulches given the right circumstances. For example, I wouldnât want too much of the wood mulches near low points of my homes framing due to carpenter ant and termite issues.
The CCA spoke about in the video is so prevalent in and around the typical American home it isnât funny. Very little CCA treated lumber would ever make itâs way into mulch. Also, as someone who also worked in a large pallet factory, I never once seen any kind of treated lumber used in pallet manufacture, that isnât to say there arenât any, but they are extremely rare. I read a study once conducted to determine if CCA could be taken up by plants when grown in raised beds of CCA lumber. The study findings indicated it was not. CCA is also being phased out and around these parts is pretty much obsolete now.
I can see where cocoa hulls may be an issue for pet owners since chocolate is definitely no good for dogs and yet pretty much all dogs like to eat it, just like most humans do.
Iâd having some large spruce trees removed next week. They will be grinding the stumps. Wold the sawdust left over be good mulch? I know that spruce trees can acidity kind of go hand in hand. Worse comes to worse could I use it on my blueberries