While artificial trees find their way back into their boxes or storage after Christmas, the situation is more complicated for Christmas trees that have been brought into people's homes from the forest. They cannot be taken to regular garbage bins as waste management companies are not obliged to collect Christmas trees in addition to other forms of household garbage.

"As a rule, they cannot be taken to a regular garbage truck because they are too big, so either the housing cooperative orders a separate form of transport from us or from someone else. They are not intended to be incinerated at the Iru incineration plant, but are a resource that can be reused, so it does not make sense to mix them with other waste either," said Mart Laidmets, head of Eesti Keskkonnateenused in south Estonia.

This year in Tartu, Christmas trees are being collected at waste stations or in special collection containers located throughout the city.

"They are then taken to a shredding site, where they will be turned into a kind of substrate that will be used by the hard-working sorters of Tartu to compost bio-waste. Eventually they will become compost that is spread on fields around the city," said Laidmets.

While the Christmas trees collected in the City of Tartu are chopped up and used for composting bio-waste, Christmas trees disposed of in Tartu Municipality end up taking center stage at the Raadi Christmas Tree Bonfire Concert.

"The event involves everyone bringing their old Christmas trees to the bonfire, and then there is a concert and a show," said Tartu Municipality cultural specialist Karita Tilk.

"This idea stems from the issue that Raadi has the largest population in Tartu Municipality, all of whom live in apartment buildings, and after Christmas, everyone was just leaving their trees by the trash cans, but the waste management company did not take them away. So, we came up with the idea of giving people the opportunity to bring their Christmas trees to one specific place," explained Tilk.

"We don't just collect trees here in Raadi, we always put a call out across the whole municipality, and this year we have collected trees from five different locations. I'm really happy that the community is organizing its own events around each of these collection points," Tilk added.

---

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!