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Power To Save: Recycling Christmas Trees

BERLIN TOWNSHIP — Christmas trees are piled up at the Wayne County recycling center near Honesdale. Now that the holiday season has come to a close, many ...
pwr xmas trees

BERLIN TOWNSHIP -- Christmas trees are piled up at the Wayne County recycling center near Honesdale. Now that the holiday season has come to a close, many trees that were so nicely decorated are starting to be kicked to the curb.

But the recycling center hopes more start being dropped off at their facility.

"The important message now is to recycle that tree. The tree doesn’t need to go into a landfill because now there’s so many different ways you can recycle it," said recycling coordinator Mary VanPatten.

This recycling center is one of many in the Poconos that will take your tree for free. Dropoffs began the day after Christmas and there's only one requirement.

"We ask that you remove all ornaments, and tinsel if possible, and of course the lights," said VanPatten.

Some of the trees wrapped in orange were dropped off by businesses, never sold this Christmas season.

Come springtime all of the trees that are collected here will be taken and tossed through a wood chipper and put right back in the woods, something that doesn’t cost the recycling center a dime.

"It decomposes and then it breaks down…It basically turns into top soil after many years, but it breaks down," said Matt Coar of Marshall Machinery Inc.

Workers at Marshall Machinery have donated a chipper every year since the program began back in the late 1990s.

What's left of the trees after they’re chopped up is basically a mulch material. Workers say it's just a small way they can help keep a few hundred trees out of landfills each year.

"We just know that what we’re doing is really a good thing to do because it’s saving on our landfills and it’s saving our environment," said VanPatten.

You can drop off your tree at the facility near Honesdale through March.

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