Residents living in the Albuquerque area have the opportunity to recycle their live Christmas trees now through Jan. 13 through the City of Albuquerque, Solid Waste Management, Parks and Recreation and Power New Mexico’s “Treecycling” program.
The program is free and residents have three metro area locations to choose where they drop off their tree for recycling.
According to Diane Wilker, the marketing manager for the City of Albuquerque, the program has been around for 26 years. This program is one of the City’s efforts to recycle materials that might otherwise end up in a landfill.
“Christmas trees have another use (mulch),” Wilker said. “It can help beautify natural spaces rather than ending up in the landfill.”
Jesus Reyes) has been with this program for eight years. Reyes works collecting the trees from residents, dropping them off and turning them into mulch. The program does not recycle as many trees now as it did in previous years, but he credits that to the decrease in the use of real trees and an uptake in reusable artificial trees.
“Each load is about 200 hundred trees. We have had three loads so far here,” Reyes said.
According to Reyes the trees are chopped up into tiny pieces by a machine and then it becomes mulch. This machine effectively turns the tree into tiny wood particles similar to saw dust. The mulch, he said, smells fresh like pine and continues to smell good in yards after it has been watered.
He added people can drop off their Christmas lights at the same time as the trees if they have any of those to recycle. At the time of Reyes’ interview with the Daily Lobo only one box of Christmas lights had been recycled.
Reyes said some of his co-workers have been working through the treecycling program for 20 years.
The trees come from the residents of Albuquerque and the mulch goes back to them too, said Wilker. The mulch can be used as fertilizer and beautifies a variety of gardens and landscapes around Albuquerque. Reyes said those that wanted mulch picked it up from the same sites where the trees were dropped off.
Wilker said the City will not know how many trees are recycled in total until after the program is complete. People can go to drop off their trees anytime between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at any of the locations listed on the 2019 Treecycling website.
- Montessa Park Convenience Center, 3512 Los Picaros SE, 873-6607
- Eagle Rock Convenience Center, 6301 Eagle Rock NE, 857-8318
- Ladera Golf Course, Coors and Ladera NW, 888-8115
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Megan Holmen is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com, culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @megan_holmen.
