Recycling Your Christmas Tree: An Environmentally Friendly Decision

As the Christmas season approaches, many people are contemplating what type of tree that they will choose to display proudly in their homes. They will decorate it with their favorite ornaments, colorful lights, sparkly garlands, and dazzling tinsel. However, once the Christmas holiday has come to a close, and the time for taking down these decorative items arrives, what will be the destiny of most individuals' Christmas trees? Hopefully, the answer to that question will be to recycle that beloved tree. In this article, I will provide information on how a person can recycle his or her Christmas tree as well as the benefits of taking part in this environmentally friendly activity.

When it comes to recycling your Christmas tree, you have two options: you can give the tree to a recycling center near you, or you can recycle it yourself. If you choose to donate your tree for recycling, you can find the local recycling center near you by checking the Earth911's database at www.earth911.org or by calling 1-877-Earth911.

Before donating your tree or recycling it yourself, make sure that the tree is free of all ornaments, garlands, nails, stands, wires, lights, or any other type of equipment. The tree should be in a state that would resemble the way that you would find it in the forest naturally. Once this tree cleaning process has been completed, the tree is ready to be recycled.

Trees that are donated to recycling centers can be used in a multitude of ways. The trees can be ground into mulch or cut into chips that can be placed around other growing plants to help protect them. Mulch and wood chips that are the products of recycled Christmas trees can be found in parks, flower beds, walkways, hiking trails and paths and even around other trees. When the mulch or chips decompose, they help to provide further nutrients to the plants which they surround.

The wood from recycled Christmas trees is also used to build bird feeders and shelters that can be found in various community areas. Sometimes, the donated trees are even erected in order to provide shelter for birds during the winter season. At the end of winter, these trees are then ground into mulch as well.

Another use of recycled Christmas trees is to help control shoreline erosion, to stabilize the soil in a particular area, to serve as habitats for fish, and to assist with stream bank and shoreline maintenance. Your state's Department of Natural Resources is a great organization to contact and see if your Christmas tree could be utilized for any of these mentioned purposes.

If you choose to recycle your Christmas tree yourself, a variety of ideas exist for what you can do with it. If you have access to a saw and a wood chipper, you could produce your own mulch or wood chips and place them around your plants or garden paths or in your compost pile. You could also give away some of this homemade mulch to friends or neighbors to be used around their plants as well.

You also could use the wood from your recycled tree to build your own bird feeders or safely secure the intact tree in your backyard to provide your neighborhood birds with protective shelter during the winter season. Too, you could remove some of the branches and create your own wreaths or garlands to use as decoration in your home, or if you are a carpenter, you could use the wood from the tree in one of your projects.

In addition to the many uses of the recycled Christmas tree, several other benefits exist as a result of this environmentally friendly action. Discarded trees are kept out of the landfill and can decompose at a natural rate rather than taking much longer to break down within the landfill due to the lack of oxygen. As a result of the recycling of the trees, wildlife, such as birds and fish, are provided with more places to seek shelter during the winter season. Other plants that are surrounded by the mulch produced from ground recycled trees reap more nutrients as the mulch decomposes, and Christmas trees that are placed along areas of shoreline help to slow down the erosion of sand and shore by the ocean.

Therefore, when the time comes for your Christmas tree to leave your living room, you may want to consider recycling it either yourself or through your local recycling center. Our environment will be a better place as a result of your decision.

Sources:

http://treesandshrubs.about.com/od/topiarybonsai/tp/RecyclingChristmasTrees.htm

http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=misc&a=misc/xmas/treecycle.html

http://www.recycleyourchristmastree.com/about.html