6 Ways to Recycle Your Christmas Tree

Have you ever considered recycling your Christmas tree? Each year, Americans buy an estimated 25 to 30 million live Christmas trees. The average tree takes about seven years to grow but spends just two to four weeks gracing our living rooms. Then, too many of them live out the rest of their days in the landfill, taking up space and emitting methane, a very harmful greenhouse gas, while they oh-so-slowly decompose.

You might think a fake Christmas tree that you can reuse year after year might be a better solution, but you’d be wrong, says Tim O’Connor, executive director of  the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA).  “Fake trees are made from PVC plastic and metal in a Chinese factory and shipped overseas,” he says. “They are not recyclable and will sit in a landfill for more than 1,000 years after they’ve been disposed.”

O’Connor says real trees are a far more sustainable solution. Even more so if you give them a second life. So before you drag yours to the curb for the garbage truck to haul away, consider these clever ways to recycle your Christmas tree.

How to Recycle Your Christmas Tree

Check with your town

Many towns and cities around the country have curbside tree pickup days. The question is, what do they do with them all? Before you drag your tree to the curb, call your public works department to ask. Do they landfill them or run them through a chipper to make mulch to use in local parks? If the latter, you can feel good about letting them haul it away. NCTA says there are more than 4,000 local Christmas tree recycling programs around the U.S.

Make your own mulch

Christmas trees make great winter mulch for garden beds. If you have access to a chipper use that, or rent one for a day with your neighbors and make a communal pile. Alternatively, you can cut the branches into manageable pieces and lay them in your garden beds over bulbs and perennials to provide some insulation. This can reduce winter damage for plants like lavender and rosemary that sometimes don’t survive the cold months. If you have a compost pile, lay some boughs over top to keep the pile warm so it can continue working over the winter.

Recycle your Christmas tree into a wildlife habitat

If you have a large property, find a remote spot and lay the tree on its side to create a brush pile. According to the wildlife biologists at Backyard Ecology, this can create a great place for songbirds, lizards, snakes, rabbits, and other small mammals to live and hunt. Add other sticks and branches if you like. If you have a pond on your property, sink the tree. The fish will love you for it.

Make coasters

Get ahead of the game and turn this year’s tree into next year’s presents. Strip the boughs off the trunk and cut it into half-inch discs (leave the bark on). Next, sand both sides with a heavy grit paper and smooth it out with a finer grit. Finally, apply a thin coat of varnish. Tuck them away till next year and give them away as sets of four.

Make your own pine-scented cleaning spray

This one comes from one of my favorite influencers, Armen Adamjan. Just chop up a few branches and put them in an airtight jar. Add a couple cups of vinegar and set it on a sunny sill for about a week. Adamjan says the vinegar will extract the oils and antibacterial properties of the pine. Add a shot of vodka or rubbing alcohol, then strain the golden liquid through a coffee filter into a spray bottle. Use it on countertops, mirrors, stove tops, or floors. Make a big batch and stop buying all those expensive, toxic cleaners. I love the smell of this spray so much; it makes me clean more often!

Make a sachet

Stick some clippings into a cloth bag and tuck it into a drawer or closet to impart a nice piney smell.

One final tip: Don’t burn your tree in your fireplace. It emits a lot of soot and coats your chimney with creosote. But it’s fair game and great fuel for your outdoor fire pit.

Kristin Hostetter is Outside’s sustainability columnist. She is obsessed with her pine-scented cleaning spray and is on the hunt for other pine-scented things to make with her Christmas tree. Follow her journey to live more sustainably by signing up for her twice-monthly newsletter.