Feel-good way to dispose of tree

WITH Christmas just six weeks away, now is the time to start thinking about contributing to a fundraising achievement of spectacular proportions.

The annual East Cheshire Hospice Christmas Tree Collection is on target to raise over £1 million pounds for the hospice this year – almost 19 years to the day since the collection first started.

Since 2001, countless volunteers have helped collect more than 70,000 trees in what has become the largest volunteer-led tree collection in the country.

And this year, their target of £125,000 will help see them push through the one-millionpound mark in an enormous industrial operation to turn the trees into tonnes of recycled mulch.

The collection this year takes place on Saturday and Sunday, January 12 and 13, and will cover the post codes of CW12, SK9, SK10, SK11, SK12 or WA16 – the areas of Macclesfield, Wilmslow, Alderley Edge, Bollington, Prestbury, Poynton, Congleton and Knutsford.

Lisa Ball, community fundraiser at East Cheshire Hospice, said: “The annual tree collection has now become a hugely popular hospice tradition and we are enormously proud of the volunteer team who have raised more than £900,000 since the scheme first started in 2001. All the money raised goes directly to the hospice to help us provide care for those with life-limiting conditions, and their families and friends, through the in-patient unit, the daycare centre and the hospice @Home service.“

Registration for the collection is now open at www.echtrees.org.uk or call the customer care hotline 01625 708939.