New York recycles Christmas trees to nourish its parks.
New York, Dec 31 (EFE)
Under the arch of New York’s Washington Square Park shines a 14-meter-high Christmas tree covered in white lights, a picture-postcard scene if it weren’t for the fact that just a few meters away there is a graveyard of fir and pine trees piled on top of each other with their dry needles waiting to be recycled.
“I like the idea of my Christmas tree becoming mulch (a layer of organic material placed on the soil surface to improve plant health). That it has a second life,” Lauren Gentry told EFE after piling her Christmas tree on the mound.
In New York City, composting Christmas trees is mandatory, and the Department of Sanitation is responsible for collecting undecorated trees and Christmas wreaths on weekly compost collection days at the curbside or at various collection points.
However, the less civic-minded choose to leave their trees on the sidewalks any day next to the garbage bags, so the skeletons of the fir trees are left abandoned on the street for days or even weeks.
To encourage New Yorkers to participate, Mulchfest is held annually, where people can watch as the tree that adorned their living room during the holidays is shredded into wood chips that will be used to nourish trees and make New York City even greener. Last year, the Big Apple recycled 52,569 trees.
This time the festival will be held during the weekend of January 10th and 11th.
The Christmas business in New York
Gentry says he normally waits until after the New Year to throw away his Christmas tree, but this year he had to get rid of it earlier because when he returned from a two-week vacation “the tree was dead from lack of water”.
“At this point, my tree is basically firewood,” laments the young woman who bought the two-meter-tall tree for $90 at the Whole Foods supermarket.
Gentry recalls that last year the same type of tree at the same store cost him $75, and that when he moved to Greenwich Village he bought his first tree from a street vendor. He paid about $200 for it, a bargain compared to the roughly $1,750 that the largest and most elaborate trees can cost.
This is the fourth time he has left his tree in the iconic square: “I live a couple of blocks away. The hardest part is getting it out of the apartment and down the stairs. And then the walk is quite easy,” explains Gentry, who this time received help from his mother to take the tree down.
Many other New Yorkers choose not to get their hands dirty and have a company take care of collecting the tree.
“Our company will probably harvest about 4,000 trees,” explains Victor, one of the NYC Trees workers, to EFE, while cutting the lights off a tree with pruning shears before leaving it on the pile of fir tree skeletons.
“This particular customer paid about $500 for the delivery of the tree to his house, the collection after Christmas, the removal of the lights, and the recycling,” notes César, who works at the same company.
Prices vary depending on the size of the tree and whether the customer adds lights and decorations. According to employees, the company earns about $2 million in eight weeks.
