Signs of the Season Put Through the Grinder : Environment: Now that the holiday has passed, Christmas trees are being collected and pulverized into mulch for green thumbs.

For us, it’s death and taxes. For Christmas trees, it’s mulch.

In the ecologically minded 1990s, most Douglas firs, junipers and pines that have given a lifetime of service to holiday spirit are recycled. In an all but certain path to a neatly tended suburban yard, they are put through the grinder and turned into mulch.

“We try to keep trees out of the landfill,” said Bill Camarillo, chief financial officer of California Wood Recycling in Ventura, the county’s largest recycler of Christmas trees.

Camarillo said most cities have a curbside service to pick up trees after the holidays. “These days, about 90% of the trees get recycled.”

Aside from its main yard on Auto Center Drive, California Wood Recycling has facilities in Ojai and Simi Valley. Camarillo estimates that by the end of the holiday season his company will have recycled 75,000 trees.

“By the end of next week, we’ll have more trees here than you can imagine,” he said.

The yard is not quiet on the last Friday afternoon of the year. Truck after truck pulls up to the scales at the yard’s entrance.

In a city truck, Manuel Jimenez and Dave Beatty are picking up trees along Oxnard’s curbs. Their load checks in at just over 1,000 pounds.

“This is my day off,” Jimenez says. “But there are so many trees, we need extra manpower. This is what we’ll be doing every day for the next week or two.”

He added with a broad smile: “It’s fun work. We get to smell pretty good.”

Tilting the truck bed, Jimenez drives forward. About 50 trees drop to the ground as a pine-scented cloud of dust rises into the air.

Just as trucks drop their loads at one end of a huge pile of trees, two large front loaders dig into the other end. Their buckets--like huge, open jaws--grab five or six trees at a time.

The trees are hauled to the far end of the yard and dumped into a massive, rotating tub about 15 feet in diameter.

“A couple of minutes later they are dust,” Camarillo says.

The noise from the tub grinder is deafening. From time to time, a wood chip flies out at rocket speed. While the grinder is in operation, only the wheel loaders are allowed near it.

A few feet away, a pile of mulch at the end of a conveyor belt grows and grows.

This year, most Christmas trees that were cut and offered for sale found a home. Nurseries around the county say this holiday season was a good one for tree sales. At Green Thumb International in Ventura, nursery manager Karl Dobler said he only has about 20 trees left.

“We usually cut it pretty close,” Dobler said. The nursery sells about 7,500 trees every year, give or take a few hundred.

Recycling your tree early is a smart idea. With indoor heating and a lack of water, most trees are dry before the end of the year. When a tree is brittle and its needles begin to fall, it’s time to get rid of it.

Dehydrated Christmas trees are fire hazards. The Ventura County Fire Department warns that a dry tree can ignite violently and burn with the same intensity as a gallon of gasoline.

While California Wood Recycling processes all sorts of trees and yard waste for resale, Christmas tree mulch is treated differently. It is piled separately from the other mulch mounds at the yard and offered free to the public.

“We have a special Christmas tree recycling program,” Camarillo said. “After the first or second week in January, we [give] the mulch away for free. We limit it to one 30-gallon trash barrel per person.”