It's one of America's great recycling success stories: Every year, hundreds of thousands of discarded Christmas trees are collected and reused.
Many are picked up at the curb by garbage collection services and turned into mulch. But there are other second acts for Christmas trees, too. They're placed on beaches to shore up dunes and sunk in lakes to be used as fish habitats. They've even been milled into lumber for use in building homes.
How many of the 25 million to 30 million fresh Christmas trees sold each year are recycled is difficult to measure because most recycling programs "are implemented on such a local level," says National Christmas Tree Association spokesman Rick Dungey. The good news, though, is that tree-recycling efforts are now "ubiquitous," and recycling a tree is "easier than ever," he says.
This will be the 27th year for Christmas tree recycling in San Francisco, where nearly 600 tons of trees are fed into a giant wood-chipper outside City Hall each year and turned into mulch. New York City's Department of Sanitation collects about 150,000 trees each year and mulches them in a joint program with the Parks Department. The mulch is used in parks, playing fields and community gardens. Residents lucky enough to have their own urban backyards can take home a bag at "Mulchfest" events held around the city.
Manhattan's Rockefeller Center is famous for its towering Christmas tree. For the seventh consecutive year, this season's tree will be donated to Habitat for Humanity. The tradition began when the 2007 Rockefeller tree went to build a home in Pascagoula, Miss., for a survivor of Hurricane Katrina.
Lumber from each milled Rockefeller tree is marked so that the families know its origin. In some years, families that have benefited from the construction have attended the tree-lighting event in Manhattan.
In Jefferson Parish, a suburb of New Orleans, discarded Christmas trees are used to help prevent marshland erosion. The trees are placed in wooden cribs, in shallow water parallel to the shore, where they absorb the impact of waves. They decompose over time and must be replaced yearly. The program, which has been in existence since the winter of 1990-91, uses between 10,000 and 30,000 trees a year.
A number of beaches at the New Jersey shore were built up using Christmas trees after last year's Superstorm Sandy. Beaches at the Rockaways, in New York City, which were also devastated by Sandy, benefited from a Christmas tree project as well. The Rockaways effort was sponsored by California's Barefoot Wine & Bubbly, an E. & J. Gallo Winery brand.
Those who prefer artificial Christmas trees usually don't throw them out after one year. But when the time comes, there's even a program to recycle them. Polygroup, one of Walmart's largest suppliers of artificial Christmas trees, runs a recycling program for all brands in Meridian Idaho. See details at www.polygroup.com/sustainability.htm?id=4.