- Across Kern County, there are 24 locations where residents can take their Christmas trees to be recycled free of charge. The list of sites can be found on the Kern County Public Works website.
- The video shows efforts at the Lebec Transfer station to recycle Christmas trees after the holidays. To be eligible for recycling, a Christmas tree must be free of decorations and not be flocked.
- In an interview on Thursday, KCPW manager Chuck Magee explained that Christmas trees that get recycled will be ground up and turned into compost to be used once again.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
It may not be a forest, but the Lebec Transfer Station says that they bring in hundreds of trees after the holidays.
Take down the decorations and prepare for the new year– the Lebec transfer station is taking in Christmas trees to chop up and reuse.
Chuck Magee, manager at Public Works, described the process. He said, “What’s going on up here and what happens at all of our sites really is we try to encourage everybody who has a live Christmas tree to undecorate it, take off the stand, and bring it in because once you’ve done that, it’s back to a regular tree which is the sort of thing we can use in our compost feedstocks.”
Some compost may even go back to Christmas tree farms– to help future Christmas trees grow.
Magee said, “As we get those trees in, we can put them in with the rest of the material that comes in to go to compost, grind them up, mix them together and send them off to make compost to sell to other entities that grow things like Christmas trees.”
While the program accepts trees at any time, they encourage the community to come sooner rather than later to help reduce fire hazards associated with dry trees.
The Lebec Transfer Station is located at 300 Landfill Rd. The station is open from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. every day except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
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