Recycling A Real Christmas Tree

The holidays are over, and it is time to take down the real Christmas tree that has graced your home for the festive season. Instead of putting it out in the trash destined for the landfill, you have many options for reusing and recycling the tree in environmentally friendly ways.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, your tree is one of the 25 to 30 million real Christmas trees that are sold in the United States each year. There are about 15,000 Christmas tree farms in the United States, growing almost 350 million Christmas trees on 350,000 acres. Pennsylvania is home to more than 1,400 Christmas tree farms, with more than 1 million trees cut and sold each year (Pennsylvania Christmas Tree Growers Association). All of those living trees provide ecosystem benefits, but even after they have been cut and sold, they can continue to contribute to the environment after death.

Before recycling your real tree, be sure to remove all the decorations, tinsel, and any paint or glitter. Artificial snow (flocking) can make it more difficult to recycle because of some ingredients used in flocking products. The following are some suggestions for multi-purpose recycling of a real Christmas tree at home.

Songbird Shelter: Prop the tree up in a corner of the yard to provide welcome shelter for songbirds from cold and predators. You might want to hang homemade feeders – such as pinecones smeared with peanut butter or half orange rinds filled with seeds – on the tree as an extra treat for the birds.

Winter Insulation: Cut off boughs to use as winter insulation for perennial plants. Lay the boughs gently over perennials to protect their crowns (the base where stems emerge from the ground) from fluctuating winter temperatures and cold drying winds, especially if there is no snow cover. Evergreen perennials such as hellebores, marginally hardy plants, fall-planted trees and shrubs, early emerging spring bulbs such as snowdrops, and fall-planted pansies can all benefit from that extra measure of insulation until the warmer days of spring arrive.

Firewood: The trunk of the tree can be cut into logs for firewood, and you can use smaller branches as kindling. Due to the resin content, Christmas tree wood is best burned outdoors, such as in a fire pit or on a bonfire, and dried for a few months before being cut and burned. You could save one piece to use as a Yule log at a fire pit celebration the following Christmas.

Mulch: The entire tree, or the parts you are not using elsewhere, can be shredded to use as mulch, either on garden beds or on paths in the garden. You, or maybe a neighbor or gardening friend, will need to have a woodchipper/shredder to make this happen. This type of whole tree mulch, similar to the wood chips obtained from arborists, is a long-lasting mulch beneficial to plants and the soil. If you do not have a woodchipper, some local municipalities offer wood chip mulch sourced from curb-side pickup of Christmas trees and other woody brush.

Compost: The whole tree, or parts you have not used in other ways, can be composted, returning nutrients and organic matter to the soil over time. You can cut it up into small pieces to add to an existing compost pile, which seems very labor-intensive; or you can create a brush pile in an out-of-the-way garden corner, where the remains of your tree can provide habitat for birds, insects, and other small creatures as it slowly decays.

Indoor décor: If you are a crafty person, you can create wood slice rounds by cross-cutting thin slices of the trunk that can be used as coasters, trivets, and ornaments. Be sure to let the tree dry completely before cutting, or the wood will split. Before using, be sure to varnish these tree "cookies" to highlight the growth rings. You can also strip and use the still-green needles of your tree to create pine-scented sachets. The needles will keep their scent even after drying.

Fishponds: If you or a neighbor has a large pond, your old Christmas tree can be sunk into the pond to improve habitat for fish. (Be sure to ask your neighbor first.) The base of the tree can be tied to a block or stone and tossed into the water. The tree provides a surface on which water plants can grow, as well as a hiding place for small fish and a hunting ground for larger fish.

Even if you do not have a way to repurpose your real old Christmas tree at home, there are still community options available for recycling. Many local townships and boroughs, and some non-profit organizations, will pick up trees at curbside, or offer drop-off collection sites, after which your tree will be recycled into mulch and compost for future use by community residents.

Old Christmas trees are also useful for stream bank stabilization and aquatic habitat restoration programs. Volunteers for one community program called "Balsams for Brookies" tightly bundled discarded Christmas trees with eco-friendly twine and then secured them with wooden stakes along the banks of Dakin Creek in Wisconsin, providing fish habitat and stream bank stability as part of a larger effort to successfully return brook trout to the creek. Old Christmas trees have also been repurposed for beach dune restoration projects.

You can feel good about your real Christmas tree, knowing that it will not be wasted after the holidays. As all trees do, both in life and after death, they can provide habitat and sustenance to many other organisms as part of nature's recycling system.