The Arizona Republic

Across nation, recycled Christmas trees protect beaches from erosion

- By Beth J. Harpaz

NEW YORK — 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 curbside by local 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 as fish habitats. They’ve even been milled into lumber for use in building homes.

It’s difficult to measure how many of the 25 million to 30 million fresh Christmas trees sold each year are recycled, because most recycling programs “are implemente­d on such a local level,” said National Christmas Tree Associatio­n spokesman Rick Dungey.

The good news, though, is that treerecycl­ing efforts are now “ubiquitous” and recycling your tree is “easier than ever.”

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 to 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.

New York’s Rockefelle­r Center is famous for its towering Christmas tree, and for the seventh year in a row, this season’s tree will be donated to Habitat for Humanity.

Lumber from the milled Rock Center 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, Christmas trees 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.

“It protects the shoreline,” explained Jason Smith, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Department of Environmen­tal Affairs. “The area behind it is calm, where vegetation can grow.” The trees

 ?? WAYNE PARRY/AP ?? A public works employee dumps a truckload of discarded Christmas trees on the beach as part of a project to rebuild dunes damaged by Superstorm Sandy on Jan. 14 in Bradley Beach, N.J.
WAYNE PARRY/AP A public works employee dumps a truckload of discarded Christmas trees on the beach as part of a project to rebuild dunes damaged by Superstorm Sandy on Jan. 14 in Bradley Beach, N.J.

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