Given all the tree debris that resulted from Hurricane Ike, it comes as no surprise that there's way more of the stuff than the city knows what to do with. So the city is asking for your help to figure it out.

The city of Houston will sponsor a nationwide contest in hopes of recycling all of the 5.6 million cubic yards of tree waste cleaned up from households and front yards in the month since Hurricane Ike devastated the region.

The contest will pay $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 for the top three ideas for how to best use the heaps of debris, which city officials have said would be enough to fill up the Astrodome nearly four times over. Proposals are due by the end of the month.

So far, the city has given about 700,000 cubic yards of wood waste to two companies that will turn it into mulch and compost for resale. But the sheer volume of debris far outstrips local market demand for recycling it.

For that reason, Mayor Bill White said, the city has launched "Recycle Ike" to keep the wood, most of which will be chipped, from going to waste.

"We don't want to have to fill up our precious landfill sites with a bunch of wooded waste, so we're going to try to recycle all of it," White said. "It will probably be the single biggest recycling project that there is in the country this year."