Holiday tree recycling program
You can recycle your tree for free at one of Sacramento County’s six drop off locations. Recycling your holiday tree is a lot easier then dumping it in an alley or trying to stuff it in your green waste recycling bin at home. You can even score free ground cover and do some weekend landscaping with the mulch made from your tree.
Here is how it works. You can take your tree to any of the six locations and the tree will be recycled typically in two different ways. One way is making mulch. The tree is pushed through a grinder and comes out the other side as woodchips. Those woodchips can be given back to you on request or the facility will use if for ground cover for other county projects.
The second method of recycling commonly used is burning the trees. The burning process has proven to be very beneficial because of the energy created from the green tree.
“Holiday trees have a high lever of BTU (British thermal unit) and when burned they produce a large amount of energy, which can later be used to make electricity,” said the recycling coordinator with Sacramento County’s Department of Waste Management and Recycling(WM&R) Doug Eubanks.
Although energy can be created from recycling holiday trees the department of WM&R strongly encourages people to buy live trees and plant them after the holiday season. This cut back on the cutting down of trees and adds to the tree population, which is always a good thing for the environment.
Apparently the two recycling methods above are not the only ones every used by the department of WM&R. Unique recycling requests have been made and carried out by the department.
“Years ago a man who was in charge of natural habitat at the Nimbus Damn wanted a large number of trees that were going to be recycled. He strung the trees together and dropped them in the lake to create fish habitats. This request was defiantly s first for me,” Eubanks said.
The six different drop-off locations are:
In Sacramento:
Elder Creek Recovery & Transfer Station
8642 Elder Creek Road (Jackson Hwy, south on Florin Perkins Road, left on Elder Creek Road)
8 am - 3 pm, Dec. 29 and Jan. 5
Also accepting trees Dec. 26 - Jan 31, Monday - Friday, 6 am—5 pm; Saturday 6 am - 3 pm; closed Sundays
Kiefer Landfill
12701 Kiefer Blvd (Jackson Hwy, north on Grant Line Road, right on Kiefer Blvd)
8 am - 4 pm, Dec. 29 and Jan. 5
North Area Recovery Station
4450 Roseville Road (Hwy 80, north on Watt Ave, left on Roseville Road, inside Recovery Station)
8 am - 4 pm, Dec. 29 and Jan. 5
SMUD Corporation Yard
1708 59th Street (just off Hwy 50)
8 am - 3:30 pm, Jan. 5 only
Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station
8491 Fruitridge Road (Jackson Hwy., south Florin Perkins Road, right on Fruitridge Road)
8 am - 5 pm, Dec. 29 and Jan. 5
Also accepting trees Dec. 26 - Jan. 31, Monday - Saturday, 8 am - 5 pm; closed Sundays
In Folsom:
Dan Russell Rodeo Arena
Folsom City Park (corner of Natoma and Stafford Streets)
8 am - 4 pm, Dec. 29, Dec. 30 and Jan. 5
The free dates are only on December 29th and January 5th, but the fee is small on all other dates.
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1 comment:
When Christmas decorations are in stores the week after Halloween, I suppose it's not that surprising to read a column about recycling Christmas trees a full two weeks before Christmas.
Still, I watched the parade of Christmas trees on car roofs this weekend, making their way down the highway to homes.
Sad to think they will end up as ground cover.
A good service column, though if the writer meant that you can burn your Christmas tree in a fireplace or woodstove to get rid of it, be very careful.
I can attest that dried out pines burn incredibly hot - just ask the fire department in Chico, who visited my house one winter after I got the bright idea to use the branches for kindling.
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