› Holidays & Special Occasions › Christmas-Yule-hanukkah-Kwanzaa-Winter Solstice › Recycle: Christmas trees
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March 15, 2007 at 2:28 pm #239143
BiggerPiggyBank
How To Recycle Your Christmas Tree
by Michele Dawson
Like your holiday wrappings, your Christmas tree can be recycled for use in a number of ways – ways that your garden, your local wildlife habitat, or your community agency will appreciate.
With more than 33 million real Christmas trees sold in North America each year, tree recycling is a way to give back to the environment.
Letting birds and wildlife feed on it.
Pruning the branches and using the boughs as a winter mulch. Place over perennials.
As fertilizer. Trees can be planted in the snow in locations where the snow is alkaline. The falling needles will lower the pH, which is most beneficial for strawberry beds, bulbs and perennials.
If it doesn’t snow in your area, you can cut the branches off and cover bulbs and perennials. Hang bird feeders on the branches.
Another way to maximize the use of your tree is to see if any of your local agencies can use it.While anglers may curse wood pieces and branches while fishing, they also realize that fish are drawn to underwater structures. Bass, crappie, bluegills, catfish, and other types of fish often use the structure to hide or build nests.
Christmas trees are perfect – they’re inexpensive and provide quality underwater structures. Plus, they are easy to place in ponds and lakes and last for several years.
Fishing enthusiasts can then fish near the underwater Christmas trees.
Meanwhile, other agencies have their own uses for recycled Christmas trees. The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and its Coastal Restoration Division have a Christmas Tree Fence Program in place to protect the state’s coastal wetlands.
You can contact your local city, county, or state agency to see if any similar programs exist in your area. If not, many municipalities provide curbside recycling or a designated drop-off point for you to leave your Christmas tree to be recycled.
If you noticed a red ornament attached to your tree when you bought it, you’ll find information you need to recycle your tree. The ornament means that the buyer or retailer you bought your tree from is one of the 4,000 growers involved in a tree recycling campaign.
In the meantime, for every tree harvested, two or three seedlings are planted in its place — in spring 2001, more than 73 million tree seedlings were planted, according to the NCTA.
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› Holidays & Special Occasions › Christmas-Yule-hanukkah-Kwanzaa-Winter Solstice › Recycle: Christmas trees