Recycling Your Christmas Tree

When Christmas is over, life can be hectic. The house must be cleaned up after company has left, the left overs from Christmas dinner must be put away, decorations need to be taken down from the inside and outside of your home, and tacky Christmas gifts must be returned for store credit.

The few days immediately following Christmas and preceding the New Year are full of things that must be done, but it is important to remember to recycle your Christmas tree, as well. Christmas trees that are kept in the home for too long cause house fires every year, resulting in the loss of people's homes, their property, and maybe even their lives. 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 backyard or a garden at your residence, it might be helpful to use your old Christmas tree as mulch for your garden. The pine needles make great ground covering, and so do wood chips. If this is a project that you plan on doing at home, it might be helpful to have an extra pair of hands or two to help you take down the tree down and remove it from the home. If you happen to have a wood chipper, or one available for your use. You can feed the smaller branches 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 and 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 tie the smaller branches together and bundle them up. Place 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 that can also be made with your recycled Christmas Tree.

After disposing of their Christmas trees, many people choose to store their old Christmas trees on their own property (maybe in their barn or a similar area--it is not really a good idea to store a dried-up Christmas tree on your property if you live in the city or in a house with a regular-sized lot; Christmas trees are a severe fire hazard). The reason for this is because birds find them an excellent habitat for birds and other wildlife. Many people like to put bird feed, such as peanut buttered pinecones with bird seed on them, small seeds, or pieces of stale bread. Not only does this encourage animals to congregate near your home if you like to watch them, but it also discourages animals from getting into your barn or dumpster at home.