What to do with your old Christmas Tree

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After my sister-in-law told us that her 3 year-old son wanted to sleep under his Christmas tree, my husband and I remembered our daughter’s love of our Christmas tree when she was about the same age. When our tree was dry and brittle, we started to break the news to Lindsay that we were going to take it down. She was really upset and kept hugging the tree, which of course just added to the already alarming loss of needles. Every year we take our tree to a local park, where they have a chipping program called Mulchfest. We brought our tree there, much to Lindsay’s skepticism to “be with it’s friends”. She bid it a tearful farewell and fortunately didn’t notice the crew feeding trees into the huge chipper.

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I always find it a little sad to see Christmas trees tossed out with the trash. The fact that they were once a treasured part of the holiday and are now tossed out on the street with the garbage bags always startles me. Plus it’s hard to wrap my head around all that organic matter going to a landfill with old batteries, diapers, etc. So, let’s try and come up with some great uses for old Christmas trees to prevent them from going into landfills. TREECYCLE!

  • Find out if your community has a tree collection or chipping program. Here in NYC we have mulchfest this coming Sat. 1/9 from 10am-2pm. You can look at this site to find a park in your area that will take your tree. And while you are dragging your tree down the street, why not stop and grab one or two others that are just lying on the sidewalk waiting for trash pick up? A lot of these programs allow you to bring some wood chips home with you for your garden.
  • If you don’t have a mulching/chipping program in your community, do it yourself. Prune branches off your tree and lay them down in your garden beds. Pine branches can look nice arranged around a tree on a city sidewalk. You can add them to your compost pile, although pine needles can take a while to break down.
  • You can prune branches and make small bundles. These are great to help start fires in your fireplace.
  • If you have the land, drag your tree out into a woodsy area to be used as a wildlife refuge for birds and small animals.
  • If you have a pond, weigh your tree down and put it in the water. It becomes a nice home for fish.
  • If you live near a beach, see if your community uses old Christmas trees in an effort to restore dunes like Bradley Beach in New Jersey.
  • You can save the needles and make potpourri or sachets.

If you have a great use for an old Christmas tree, please post!

4 thoughts on “What to do with your old Christmas Tree

  1. I have the tree leaned up against the back of my chicken coop, an open part with chicken wire. The tree gives them shelter from the rain, and the needles that fall as the tree dries provide them with a bit more natural material to scratch around in. Plus it smells good.
    Not the prettiest way to use it ever, but it’s working for now.
    Threadbanger had a few uses for trees. One was trimming down the branches, painting the tree, and using it as a coatrack. I think they also used a smaller thinner tree trunk in a similar manner, but turned it on its side and used it to hang curtains from

  2. I use cut all the branches off and use them for a quick burning fuel to supplement burlap in my bee smoker. The bees seem to respond really well to pine/burlap smoke. The trunk of the tree is cut to fit to make a roost in my hen’s coop.

  3. Pingback: Cooking the Tree | On a Quasi-Related Note

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