With the new year here and the holidays officially over, remaining Christmas trees and decorations will be coming down across Elmore County, but they don’t have to end up in a landfill.
There are plenty of purposes for an old Christmas tree, nearly all of which are better than chunking it in the trash – which is the equivalent of dropping it curbside, unless your municipality has specific arrangements like some in the area do.
Wetumpka is not one of those, leaving the question for those that do have a natural tree each year how to get rid of it here.
There are two locations here accepting drop offs of the old trees to recycle them for a number of purposes.
Possibly the most common use in this area is a fish bed in a pond.
“We’ve got a program that we’re working on with a couple of folks here locally. They’re going to make fish habitats out of them,” said Frank Bertarelli owner of The Green House.
He said anyone could drop off their tree at his business if they just wanted a place to dispose of it.
Those trees would then be fastened to a weight, like a cinder block, and after a few more preparations it would be ready for submerging in a local pond.
“We’ll probably run ‘til about Jan. 15 collecting them, then putting them together and sending them out.” Bertarelli said.
He said the process had the potential of being labor intensive depending on how it was done. The cost to purchase a converted fish bed was around $5 a tree.
Most people in this area and probably the state at large are familiar with the concept of a fish bed.
For those that aren’t Bertarelli elaborated, saying essentially it provided a place of protection for smaller fish like bream from those larger like bass.
“It creates a good habitat,” Bertarelli said. “They hang around it.”
And to keep a stocked pond he said, “It’s good for making it a hatchery.”
There is at least on other location accepting old Christmas trees locally.
Central Alabama Electric Cooperative partnered with Winn Dixie, which has sectioned off a portion of its parking lot for collection purposes.
The electric coop states the trees will be recycled. However today is the last day for their collection at that location.
The National Christmas Tree Association lists several options for recycling a tree each year.
One use on that list was as a fish feeder, others were included such as: soil erosion barriers, bird feeders, mulch, hiking path markers and living, rooted trees (if purchased as such).
