With Christmas now behind us, it’s time to think about taking down your decorations and getting rid of the evergreen in your living room.
According to Susan Grimm, team leader with Waste and Recycling Services, the City of Airdrie will once again provide a free site where residents can drop off their live Christmas trees.
“We will have our gates open over here at the [Eastside] Recycle Depot – it’s not at the depot, it’s just directly beside, but there will be signage,” she said. “We have a bunker there where people can drive their trees over and leave them.”
The City will begin accepting Christmas trees on Boxing Day, and will continue offering the drop-off site until the end of January, Grimm said. The gates to the site will be open during the depot’s regular hours, and staff will be on hand Mondays and Tuesdays, when the facility is normally closed. Trees should not be deposited outside the gate once they are closed for the night, she added.
“We’re open seven days a week – Saturdays and Sundays, as well,” Grimm said. “There’s lots of time through the day to come and drop your tree off.”
Before trees are delivered to the site, she said, they should be completely stripped of decorations, tinsel and tree bags. The City will not accept artificial trees, which can instead be reused or donated – fake trees cannot be recycled.
Grimm also noted live Christmas trees are too big to go into green bins for curbside pickup.
“If someone wants to chop it up into 1.5-centimetre diameter, you know, by all means, but it might be quicker to come over here and just let us chip it,” she said.
The municipality does not offer any form of curbside Christmas tree pickup, she added – the onus is on residents to dispose of their trees.
Once the trees are collected, the City partners with FortisAlberta, which brings chippers on site to process the trees.
“Then, we use that product on our pathways in the parks throughout the City,” Grimm said.
The program is valuable, she added, as it produces a usable material the City can put towards maintaining recreation spaces around Airdrie. It also helps keeps trees out of the landfill and keeps local yards clean by offering a place to dispose of evergreens once the holidays are over.
“Use the pile; don’t let [the tree] sit beside your garage until the springtime,” Grimm said.
If you miss the deadline at the end of January, she noted the Airdrie Transfer Site will accept trees at not cost to users, as well.
