The holiday season is coming to an end and Christmas trees are coming down. While many area villages offer curbside pickup of live Christmas trees, there are other options for using parts of the tree:
- Spread peanut butter on a smaller tree branch and dip it in bird seed. Hang the branch in a tree and you have a homemade bird feeder.
- Cut parts of the trunk to use as homemade coasters. The circular shape is ideal and the wood detailing is completely unique to your tree.
- Use smaller parts of the tree or grind the larger parts and use as mulch for the garden. Pine trees in particular are an excellent choice to protect vulnerable plants during the winter.
- Have a pond? Your Christmas tree could serve as a fish shelter. Every year the Army Corps of Engineers collects live Christmas trees and drops them into lakes. These trees provide an area for smaller, younger fish to hide from larger fish. The trees also attract insects that will feed the smaller fish.
- Live Christmas trees also aid in beach erosion issues. Burying Christmas trees in the sand near a beach will collect the sand blown off the beach and form sand dunes which provide habitat for wildlife. This keeps the sand off the road.
- Christmas trees have been used on frozen lakes to help ice fisherman identify safe areas for fishing. When the lake thaws in the spring the trees sink to the bottom of the lake to naturally decompose.
These are just a few ideas for recycling and reusing live Christmas trees. Cook County, Illinois uses collected, live Christmas trees to rebuild housing structures for wildlife. This helps the wildlife that has been displaced due to area development. There are many ways live Christmas trees can continue to serve a useful purpose. Use your imagination to envision other options.
Does your community reuse recycled Christmas trees? Have a unique idea for reusing a Christmas tree? Leave a comment!