The Firs Are Flying at Christmas Tree Disposal Sites

Thousands of Christmas trees are being collected this week throughout the South Bay in public and private recycling programs that participants hope will become a new holiday tradition.

“I’m so glad to do this. It’s a good way to return something to the Earth,” Diana Maruna of San Pedro said Wednesday after delivering a five-foot tree to Harbor Regional Park in Wilmington.

Since last weekend, the park has been the drop-off point for hundreds of trees in a recycling program sponsored by the city of Los Angeles that has already surpassed last year’s effort. No numbers were available Wednesday, but park officials said they expected to collect at least twice as many as the 500 trees dropped off at the park last year.

The program, which continues through Saturday, allows area residents to deliver their trees to the park for recycling into compost or mulch. In return, each person receives a 15-gallon bag of mulch donated by United Pacific Corp., a tree grinding and recycling company in Santa Fe Springs.

“It’s been busy all day,” Harbor Regional’s maintenance supervisor Jeff Costa said Wednesday as a steady flow of cars and trucks entered the recycling lot off Vermont Avenue, south of Pacific Coast Highway.

Last year, Costa said, the recycling program filled two 20-foot trash bins with trees. This year, four bins have already been filled, with scores of additional trees still arriving at the park.

“It’s great to see this,” Costa said.

The recycled trees, according to Marion Spence, harbor-area parks superintendent, will be used for weed control, ground cover and erosion control at various city sites, including parks like Harbor Regional, the third largest in Los Angeles.

Similarly, recycling programs were under way in other local cities. In Hermosa Beach, a recycling bin will remain open through Sunday at 1315 Valley Drive, and in Rolling Hills Estates, the Peninsula Center will collect trees for recycling from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

And in Torrance, Rolling Hills and elsewhere, refuse companies will pick up trees left at curbs.

The largest of the curbside recycling programs encompasses Carson, Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach and is expected to recycle about 30,000 trees, according to one of its participants, Kellogg Supply Inc. of Carson.

Kathy Kellogg, corporate secretary for the family-run garden supply business, said Wednesday that the company has already come close to collecting the 10,000 trees picked up last year by Western Waste Industries. The trees, she said, will be ground into chips and recycled by Kellogg for sale as compost.

If this year’s collection meets expectations, Kellogg said, an estimated 200 tons of landfill space in Southern California will be saved. “Trees can take up a lot of space in a landfill, so this program benefits the environment” both by saving landfill space and recycling the trees as compost or mulch, she said.

“It’s a great idea,” Mark Baxter, 35, of Lomita said Wednesday after dropping off his six-foot Christmas fir tree at Harbor Regional Park.

“In these times, the whole idea of Christmas trees seems a little crazy. I mean, just to cut them down for decorations seems like a waste. And to throw them away is really a waste,” he said.

“On the other hand,” he added, “I can’t see putting up a plastic tree, either.”