Here’s how to repurpose your Christmas tree after the holidays
Posted Dec 23, 2024 01:48:54 PM.
Last Updated Dec 23, 2024 02:47:21 PM.
The City of Ottawa is encouraging residents to explore options to repurpose or donate their Christmas trees once the holidays come to an end.
With many options to reuse trees, this can come with benefits to the environment, wrote the City of Ottawa in December’s climate change newsletter. Relocating an evergreen to the backyard can provide shelter for wildlife and improve soil through decomposition, it noted.
Additionally, residents can use trimmed branches as garden stakes and supports for vegetable vines, flowers and bushes, as well as branches or pieces of tree trunk to make “rustic garden edging”, the said city.
How to donate your tree
Ottawa outlined ways residents can donate their Christmas trees.
This includes the National Capital Commission Christmas Tree drop-off, where trees will be used along the Rideau Canal Skateway. The drop-off is located at the Colonel By parking lot, south of Bronson Avenue.
Additionally, Christmas trees can be donated to the Vanderlaand Barnyard Zoo , for the animals to enjoy.
Christmas trees can also be repurposed as windbreakers on the Kichi Sibi Winter Trail. Residents who wish to donate to the trail can drop off their trees at Remic Rapids, 351 Sir John A. Macdonald Pkwy. from December until Feb. 28.
How to dispose of your tree
Alternatively, residents can dispose of their holiday tree by placing it out with the green bin for collection.
All decorations must be removed and the tree should be placed at the curb before 7 a.m. on the scheduled collection day, the city noted. Trees will not be collected if they are wrapped in plastic bags, frozen in snowbanks or have decorations.
Collected trees are sent to the city’s contracted organics processing facility or the Trail-Road Waste facility.
A composting process follows or trees are mulched and used to cover garbage at the landfill.
For more information on disposal of Christmas trees, click here.
There will be no curbside or multi-residential green bin, recycling, or garbage collection on Dec. 25th or Jan. 1. Collection will resume the following day.
