Recycling your Real Christmas Tree

Good news on the environmental front: there are many ways a real Christmas tree can be recycled after its job is done in your home. Many municipalities offer curbside tree pickup on certain dates after Christmas, and some of those use the trees in chippings for mulch. In the city of Grand Blanc, for instance, the mulch collection program picks up right after the holiday just for Christmas tree collection.

You can check with your city or township to see what they offer; in my experience a web search for "recycle Christmas tree (city name)" is the best way to check it out. But...if your pickup doesn't include Christmas trees for recycling in Oakland County, you can do something about it yourself: take the tree to a county park. The Oakland County Parks have a great drop-off program that includes 11 park locations. You can take your undecorated tree to any of these parks during their normal hours and add it to the stacks of other residents' trees. You can check out their web site, Destination Oakland, to learn about hours and other details.

This photo from the Oakland Press shows a Parks staffer
helping with Christmas tree dropoff.

After helping a friend recycle his tree this way a couple of times, I can say that as the end date of the program, January 16, rolls around, those stacks of Christmas trees are pretty impressive! It feels good to know that so many people are interested in keeping this recyclable resource out of our landfills. And the best part is, the wood chips made from these trees is made available to the public free of charge starting just a few weeks later. They can be useful for making paths in the yard/garden, and if applied after composting for a few months can also add some great nutrients to the garden soil.

Curious about other methods of recycling a real Christmas tree? The National Christmas Tree Association has some very interesting reports to share, from rebuilding coastlines to manufacturing flu vaccines.