Tree That Served Its Purpose Can Serve Another

That Christmas tree that threatens to blanket your living-room carpet with needles during the next few days can have a new life after the holidays.

At about 30 drop-off sites in the county, the trees will be ground into mulch or, if living, replanted.

Residents participating in the city of San Diego’s curbside pickup of greenery, a pilot program operating in Del Cerro, Grantville and San Carlos, will be able to put their trees out along with their garbage. The city will also operate drop-off recycling sites, including two for living trees.

The aim of local officials is to save landfill space by converting the cut trees into mulch, which will be used in parks and along highways to slow soil erosion and retain moisture.

Replanting the living trees helps reduce global warming by creating shade and absorbing carbon dioxide, according to officials at I Love a Clean San Diego County Inc., a nonprofit agency coordinating the countywide tree recycling effort.

“It will save landfill space, that’s for sure,” said Erika Wudtke, coordinator of the post-holiday program, now in its 18th year. “The mulch can be used for a lot of things, along the parks and highways, to retain moisture.”

“Mulch is an organic material, and returning natural resources back to the soil instead of the landfill is optimally what we would like to do,” said Wudtke, who hopes to have 110,000 Christmas trees recycled. “I think that’s the best way to give the earth a gift.”

The program, which last year recycled 97,000 trees, will take them to one of the landfills in the county to be ground into mulch. El Cajon will have a grinder at 1050 Vernon Way, and residents who bring bags can take home the mulch from their trees.

That city will try for a “pine forest effect” along the bike path in Hillside Park by replanting live Christmas trees that are turned in to the Parks Department or Pinery Tree Farms.

Coronado, Imperial Beach and Oceanside will have curbside pickup of cut Christmas trees on the regular garbage pickup days.

For information about time and dates of operation and the location of drop-off sites, call I Love a Clean San Diego’s hot line at 270-8468 or 1-800-237-258.

Residents are asked to remove all ornaments, tinsel and nails from the trees before recycling.