CLEVELAND — The holiday season is over, but don’t forget that some of your holiday decorations, like your Christmas Tree, can be recycled.

What You Need To Know

  • You can recycle some holiday decorations like lights and Christmas trees

  • Recycling Christmas trees can help the environment 

  • Cuyahoga County and Summit Metro Parks offer ways to recycle Christmas trees

Carin Miller, the education specialist with the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District, said about 10 million Christmas trees are thrown away each year in the United States. She said throwing them out can harm the environment.

“If it goes to the landfill, organic waste does not really break down in a landfill, and it gives off methane gas,” Miller said.

Places like Cuyahoga County and Summit Metro Parks offer ways to recycle your Christmas tree. Claire Merrick, the marketing and public relations manager for Summit Metro Parks, explained.

“We’ve been doing Christmas tree recycling since the 1970s and, since then, tens of thousands of trees have been dropped off. We usually average between 700 and 800 a year,” Merrick said. 

Merrick said to recycle the tree, you need to make sure there aren’t any decorations on it. Summit Metro Parks offers six locations to recycle your tree.

“Our forestry crew visits each location, and they chip the trees there on site, and then the chips are taken to our parks field offices, some of it is used for landscaping in the gardens around parks, things like that, off trail areas, and then some of it is taken to be composited and some of the chips are donated to the public so visitors can come and pick them up to use in their landscaping or mulching,” Merrick said.

Miller said in Cuyahoga County many communities offer curbside pickup for Christmas trees or people can take them to a compositing facility. Miller said you can even just leave them in your yard.

“Take off all the decorations, put it out in your yard, you can either put it on its side or leave it standing up somehow," Miller said. "It’s great shelter for wildlife during the winter and as the tree breaks down naturally and decomposes it continues to provide habitat for all different kinds of wildlife."

You can even recycle some of your holiday decorations.

“If your lights are broken or you just don’t want them anymore, those can be recycled as well," Miller said. "So those can be brought to us at our facility in Garfield Heights. The zoo, the Cleveland Metro Parks Zoo does a collection, and then many cities also do collection of holiday lights."

The goal is to create less waste this holiday season.