Summit County is offering its annual Christmas tree recycling program through Monday, Jan. 12.
The county has five drop-off locations this year: Wanship, next to the Stockyards; Kamas, behind the City Building; Oakley, beside City Hall; Silver Creek at Bell’s Truck Stop; and Jeremy Ranch across from the gas station.
“You can also drop them off at either landfill free of charge,” said Tim Loveday, the county’s solid waste superintendent. “But we need the trees to be clean. We have problems every year with people leaving lights on them, but that stuff is contaminated at that point. We can’t recycle that, so you need to pull off those wires.”
Loveday said it’s important for people to properly dispose of their Christmas trees because they’re difficult to handle. They take a long time to decompose and release greenhouse gases if they’re left to decay in a landfill.
“But they are recyclables, so to speak,” Loveday said. “We have a program now where we’re chipping all this brown waste from the Christmas trees, the tree branches, that kind of thing. It’s being chipped by a company who takes it to Salt Lake, and then they make colored mulch out of it for landscaping purposes. It keeps it out of our landfill, frees up airspace in the landfill and ultimately saves the county money in the long run.”
This is the 15th year Summit County has helped to recycle Christmas trees, according to Loveday. The county has had various uses for trees in the past, including chipping them in-house and using them as wind fences along roadways. Now, though, it’s easiest to outsource the process to a different company.
“The Christmas trees are important, but I also like to remind people as we go forward through the year that we do have a brown waste diversion program that we implemented last fall,” Loveday added. “As you have tree branches, if you’re taking trees off your property, keep those clean, bring them to either landfill, and we’ll make sure those get chipped and stay out of the waste as well.”