Help the city’s gardens by recycling your Christmas tree
Every year millions of people throw out their Christmas trees. This year the city has continued its recycling program to reuse the trees and help the earth. The trees that were collected will be turned into mulch and then used in gardens and parks throughout the city. Picture by Aja Landolfi.
by Aja Landolfi, staff reporter
Every year millions of people all over the world buy and put up Christmas trees for the holiday season. Since these Christmas trees are discarded after the holiday, the city has started a recycling program to help the environment and make having Christmas tree more environmentally friendly.
According to National Christmas Tree Association, there are approximately 25-30 million real Christmas trees sold in the U.S every year. To help get rid of the trees after the holidays, there are over 4,000 recycling programs all over the U.S.
“I think that it’s a really good thing because it’s like reduce, reuse, recycle,” freshman Brianna Mendoza said.
On January 10th or January 11th people who live in New York City can recycle their Christmas trees by bringing them to different locations throughout the city from 10-2 pm to be mulched.
Tree mulching program is run by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the New York City Department of Sanitation and Green NYC. Last year through this program over 30,000 trees were recycled.
“In my opinion, everyone has to throw out their Christmas trees. They can’t keep them forever, so take it to be mulched. You can get some mulch for yourself, or the city will reuse it. It has an old fashioned community feel to it,” parent coordinator Helen Reed said.
Some of the chipping locations are Astoria Park, Oakland Gardens Playground, and Cunningham Park. By bringing the trees to one of these locations the person will be offered their own bag of mulch to bring home and use in their garden. If the person doesn’t want the mulch the city will keep it and use it to plant trees and gardens around the city.