Joy of Christmas

Crooked. Not enough needles. Too patchy. Half-dead already.

What happens to that sad, left-behind Christmas tree – the kind only Charlie Brown could love – left buried in the snow while others glitter with tinsel and lights?

As Linus would say, “Maybe all it needs is a little love.”

As towns began picking up Christmas trees curbside this month, we asked Christmas tree salesmen what happens to the season’s last-picked in gym class.

“In the past we’ve donated them to families in town that needed one or social service agencies,” said Danielle Sherry, an employee of Shore Publishing and Smith’s Acres in Niantic. “Others are brought to the farm and covered with bird seed or nesting material for the birds over the winter.”

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, in 2004, 27.1 million households bought a real tree for Christmas – a $1.15 billion industry. But tree growers aren’t the only ones making money out of the deal: Christmas tree recyclers are also – turning abandoned yuletide and Wal-Mart leftovers into compost, wood chips and mulch for sale.

“You can’t just go out and burn a bunch of trees anymore. That’s definitely not legal,” said David Waddington Sr., whose business, DW Transport & Leasing in Uncasville, ground Waterford’s Christmas trees into wood chips this week for $28 a ton – the first step in tree recycling.

Larger contractors, according to Waddington, will then buy the chips to turn into mulch or compost for construction sites, erosion control or other projects.

Wal-Mart asks their stores to use community composting programs for those trees that go unpicked, according to Jolanda Steward, a company spokesperson.

“At the majority of those programs they utilize the trees to aid the community and make compost for gardeners,” she said.

At Home Depot in Waterford, manager Maureen Shirley said that with just a few trees left behind, the store gave their leftovers away to last-minute customers, leaving none for the compost heap. At Perennial Harmony in Waterford, owner Petie Reed chips up the remaining trees for mulch herself and uses branches as cover for her perennial garden.

But according to the National Christmas Tree Association, mulch and compost are by far not the only recycling option for Christmas trees. A pharmaceutical company in Toronto, Canada, recently discovered that the needles of discarded Christmas trees can be used to create the main ingredient in Tamiflu, used to counteract influenza. Biolyse Pharma Corporation plans to begin manufacturing this month.

“Now Christmas trees are going to be used to fight Asian bird flu,” said Rick Dungey, spokesperson for the National Christmas Tree Association.

Recycled trees have also been used for dune restoration and Jefferson Parish in Louisiana has been using discarded Christmas trees – approximately 1 million since 1991 – to combat coastline erosion.

In addition, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department operates a state fisheries habitat restoration program using recycled Christmas trees as fish habitats.

Dungey said his organization used to give out a national award for Christmas tree recycling efforts, but such programs have since become so widespread that they haven’t given out the award in recent years because they’ve have trouble getting nominations. Even so, Dungey said, “There are some places that don’t have any organized recycling efforts.”

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