Disposing of your Christmas Tree
Dumping for Chipping
Many cities organise a dumping area where you can leave Christmas trees to run through a chipper. The resulting chips can be used for mulch or ground cover in parks. One or two really enterprising councils have actually begun to sell these mulching chips back to householders as ‘Christmas Chippings’ which helps fund other environmental projects. Ring your local council and find out if they have a dumping zone and when it is open as they tend to close fairly early in January
Wildlife Habitat
Move the tree outside to become a bird habitat. Peanut butter-packed pine cones and suet can be hung from the branches to entice and feed birds through the winter. However, with this method, the tree will still be a problem when spring comes, especially if the chipping programmes locally have shut down.
In the USA, many councils dump weighted Christmas trees into their very large lakes as they become mini-reefs for fish which are then caught by anglers under licence. This practice is beginning to emerge in some Scottish lochs too, but don’t dump your tree in public water yourself – the fine can be up to £2,000!
Personal Disposal
There are plenty of things we can do ourselves to extend the use of trees rather than putting them out for the bin men. First, evergreen branches can be clipped and laid around plants to provide extra protection from the winter conditions. Second the trunk can be dried for a few weeks in a garage and then burned in a wood stove or fireplace where you can enjoy the last of your Christmas tree as you hear and smell the resinous pitch popping in the flames.
Christmas tree dump photograph, author’s own.
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