Eco-Friendly Ways to Recycle Your Christmas Tree
Nothing beats the scent of a fresh Christmas tree for the holidays. But what do you do with it after Christmas is over and you’re tired of cleaning up a million needles every day?
Here are a few different eco-friendly ways to dispose of your Christmas tree when you take it down.
Get Christmas Tree Crafty
If you’re into woodworking, consider using your Christmas tree for some cool crafty projects. You can create all sorts of neat things from the wood, like custom coasters or houseplant stands cut from the stem of the tree, or carve unique utensils from the larger branches!
Dry Your Tree for Firewood
If you have an outdoor fire pit, wood-burning stove, or fireplace in your house, simply chop your Christmas tree up and stack it to dry with your other firewood. By Christmas time next year, it should be ready to burn. You could even start a family Christmas tradition to burn last year’s tree on the day you set up next year’s tree to honour the memories.
Compost Your Christmas Tree
If you have a wood chipper, you can turn your tree into mulch to use in your yard or add to your compost heap. It can be challenging to achieve the right balance of brown to green matter in the compost. Chopping your tree into small pieces and letting it dry over the winter will give you some good brown matter to chip up and add to your compost next year.
Make A Christmas Tree Bird Feeder
Your tree might have reached the end of its useful indoor life, but the local birds can still get some use out of it!
Set it up securely in your backyard, and decorate it with presents for the birds. Hang bird feeders, suet balls, pieces of fruit, berries, and unbuttered popcorn on it for the critters in your backyard. Just make sure you clean up any leftover snacks before the bears wake up in the spring. You can burn your tree as firewood in the spring or chip it up into mulch or compost.
Powell River Special Olympics Christmas Tree Mulching Fundraiser
As usual, the Christmas Tree Mulching Fundraiser event for local Special Olympics athletes will happen on January 3rd this year. This is our favourite way to recycle your Christmas tree because it benefits our local community.
The chipping and mulching event is held in the Mother Nature parking lot from 10 am to 1 pm on January 3rd, 2021.
With a donation, you can drop your tree off on Sunday morning for chipping. Or, you can make a donation at any of the grocery stores in town, 7-11, or Mother Nature, and get a tag for your tree.
You must have your tree fully naked, no tinsel, garland, or decorations on it, with the donation tag attached, at the curb by 8 am Sunday.
Tagged trees will be picked up by the awesome volunteer staff from the city that helps with this event every year. They’ll bring them to Mother Nature, and everything will be chipped. The city uses the mulch created to maintain public park areas around town.
Donations of $20 or more will receive a tax receipt if you leave your full mailing address when you make your donation. Money raised helps to support over 50 local athletes.