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Support The Environment: Recycle Your Christmas Tree

Christmas trees have quite a short period of glory; whether for the twelve days of Christmas or for the more likely month, the average Christmas tree will be adorned in bright decorations for quite a short period of time. By the end of the first week in January, they can be forlorn and dejected looking. The time has come to take down this year's Christmas tree.

For those who have artificial trees, it is just a matter of dusting down, folding up and putting in a box, before hiding it away in the attic or some other storage space. For the real Christmas trees, though, a decision has to be made what to do with them.

If at all possible, you should think of a way to recycle your Christmas tree. Christmas trees that are kept in the home for too long can cause house fires, every year resulting in the loss of people's homes, property, and maybe even their lives.  So it is wise to protect yourself and your family, and give a little help to the environment in the process when you recycle your old Christmas tree. 

If you have a garden at your home, you could chop up the tree with a shredder, and use it as a mulch.  The pine needles make a good ground covering, and so do wood chips.  You can feed the smaller branches of the Christmas tree into the chipper, one by one, and use the wood chippings to cover your garden's top layer of soil in the winter time.  This should add nutrients to the soil over time, and also help prevent seeds and roots from freezing so easily. 

If you don't have a wood chipper at your disposal, you may also find it helpful to simply use a saw or chain saw to remove the branches from the trunk of your Christmas tree.  You can then and bundle the smaller branches together and tie them. You can then use these small bundles of branches on the ground around your flower bed.  This should work to preserve and warm the soil in your garden just as much as the wood chipping mulch which can also be made with your recycled Christmas Tree.

If you are tempted to store your old Christmas tree on your property, remember what a fire hazard it can be on an average sized city or town lot. If you have kept the tree in soil over Christmas, and watered it, there is a possibility it will survive if replanted outside. This is good environmentally, and will encourage some birds, but remember these trees can grow very tall. If you live in a country area, then this is not so much of a problem.

One thing you could do is get a group of local people together before Christmas, and plan to replant all your Christmas trees together as part of a local re-afforestation program. Maybe you could persuade the Chritmas tree nursery owner to organize such a programme well in advance. You never know, you could be instigating a very important local project by taking the initiative.