Christmas Tree Recycling Chips Away at Waste

Christmas trees provide some of the prettiest sights of the holiday season. And within the next few weeks, tens of thousands of the once-glittering evergreens will go on to second lives as weed killers, landfill cover and trail mulch.

Tree recycling, uncommon just a few years ago, is now a standard part of Christmas cleanup. With a few early exceptions, disposal companies on Monday will begin collecting trees from curbs and piling them up in secondary locations to await the wood chippers.

Though the environmentally conscious might like to think that their recycled trees can help their flowers and vegetables grow, experts say that pines and firs are unsuitable for garden mulch.

“It’s a weird thing,” said Theresa Grosso, recycling manager for Los Alamitos’ Briggeman Disposal. “There’s something about pine needles that is hostile to other plants. If you put it on your rose garden, your roses won’t grow.”

The culprit is the resin, which keeps the trees moist through the holidays but, if mixed into the soil, robs it of nitrogen.

“It would be better on top of the ground than in the ground,” said Stu Span, a rose expert at Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach. “That’s why you don’t see grass or plants growing under those trees. We don’t actually use it for mulch.”

But recycled tree pulp does a great job of killing weeds and retaining moisture, so it is a popular commodity among park services, which spread it as a mulch on trails to keep the dust down. That means next summer’s hikers may be tramping along on this season’s Christmas trees.

Briggeman Disposal also expects to send 70 tons of chipped trees to the Puente Hills landfill for cover.

As tree recycling has gained popularity, the holidays have taken on a new significance for disposal companies. Dan Batty, recycling manager for Solag Disposal in San Juan Capistrano, said the new year is his favorite season.

“We actually look forward to it every year,” he said. “When you go home, you smell like Christmas trees. It keeps the season around a little longer.”

Batty and his workers will feed trees into the company’s three wood chippers for 10 hours a day, seven days a week, for three weeks, or until the 50,000-plus trees it expects to collect have all been mulched.

That will be way up from the 15,000 evergreens that the company mulched in 1993, the first year of recycling, said Batty, whose company serves most of the cities in South County.

The cost of recycling is factored into residents’ bills and contracts with the cities, disposal officials said. All a resident has to do is pull off the lights, tinsel and any other non-organic trimmings, and set the tree out at the curb.

Flocked trees go to the landfill whole because the gummy white spray with which they are decorated does not go down the wood chipper well.

A few cities, including Newport Beach and Los Alamitos, are already collecting trees. Others, such as Villa Park, Brea, Cypress, La Palma, Garden Grove, Costa Mesa, Seal Beach and Orange, begin pickup Monday. Most South County cities will begin hauling trees Jan. 2.

For specific information about recycling, most city halls have recorded messages giving details about collection schedules.