Celebrating the Holidays Responsibly, Or, A Vow to Recycle My Christmas Tree

My household’s track record for recycling its Christmas trees has been less than stellar. “Irresponsible” is probably a better word for how we bid our past seasonal indoor greenery goodbye. I’m not giving excuses, but apartment dwellers often don’t have the convenience of those forest-green trash bins offered to homeowners.

Apartment living has its perks — there’s no need to pick up the tab for plumbing expenses, the gardening is someone else’s responsibility and residents don’t need to bother with property taxes or insurance. But there’s one thing that makes me uncomfortable about rental life: the giant steel dumpster and its unsorted hodgepodge of both recyclables and rubbish.

I grew up sorting every single bottle, can and plastic tub into their respective receptacles, so throwing it all in one big rolling waste container was a terrifying idea to me. Newspapers were set aside into their own pile, and when all of the bins were full, we’d cash everything in at the local recycling center. 

My fond memories of organizing trash — everything from leftover food to used paper towels — might cause one to imagine an impoverished family struggling to feed a dozen little mouths, but in reality, I was part of a middle-class family living comfortably in the suburbs. I grew up in a turn-of-the-century house that my parents still own, and as immigrants from a third-world country, they were (and still are) economically efficient.

So when my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I were faced with the task of recycling our very first tree together a few years back, we were stumped. As residents of a multi-family building, we didn’t have the luxury of green waste bins, and our cranky next-door neighbor yelled at us when we tried to leave our dried-out Douglas fir at the curb for pick-up.  I don’t know for sure what happened next, but I had an unsettling feeling the tree may or may not have joined other lonely firs at a curb a few blocks away on Huston Street.

The next year, our dehydrated noble fir got a noble recycling start when we sawed it into manageable chunks. Those stumps somehow stumbled down into a trash chute, considered a questionable resting place by someone who recycles everything from receipts to bottle tops.

This year, we’ve resolved to pay our respect more responsibly to our holiday evergreen. We plan on taking advantage of the city's by dropping off our coniferous décor at the L.A. Zoo parking lot on Jan. 8 of next year. We’ll enjoy its fresh Yuletide scent for another week with the peace of mind that our tree will end up in a happier, greener place.

Select Recreation & Park and fire stations are accepting Christmas trees for recycling Sunday, Jan. 8 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.  For a more thorough list of drop-off locations, visit http://www.lacitysan.org/tree-recycle.htm.