Christmas trees this week will be picked up this week during the second trash collection, from Wednesday, Jan. 9, to Saturday, Jan. 12.
The program of recycling Christmas trees, funded by the city’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability, is an effort to promote the restoration of Louisiana’s wetlands and to assist in the protection of the Louisiana coastline.
Orleans Parish residents eligible for city trash collection are encouraged to recycle their Christmas trees by placing them curbside before 5 a.m. on their second regularly scheduled collection day. Residents on a Monday and Thursday collection schedule, for example, will have their trees picked up on Thursday.
Before taking it out to the curb, remove all ornaments, tinsel, lights and the tree stand. Only natural, unflocked and unadorned trees can be recycled. Flocked trees, artificial trees, trees in bags or trees with trimming will be collected with garbage and taken to the landfill.
Trees are not to be placed on the neutral grounds, as this delays the collection process.
The city’s Department of Sanitation, along with its solid-waste contractors Metro Services, Richard’s Disposal and Empire Services; the city’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability; and Leaaf Environmental, are working to collect, sort and bundle the trees, which will be placed in selected coastal zones.
In 2018, more than 8,000 Christmas trees were collected in Orleans Parish after the holidays and airlifted by the Louisiana National Guard into the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge as part of a program to create new marsh habitat.
Residents seeking more information should call 311.
