TOLEDO, Ohio — As we start winding down the holiday season, disposing of the old Christmas tree and lights in an eco-friendly way is possible. Multiple area organizations will take either old lights or live Christmas trees and keep them from being placed in the dump.
The city of Toledo has old tree drop-off locations around the city until Jan. 31:
- Jermain Park at Upton Avenue and North Cove Boulevard
- Ravine II Park at Dearborn Avenue
- Detwiler Park at Manhattan Blvd and Summit Street
- Bowman Park at Jackman Road south of Glanzman Road
All the trees that are collected will be ground into mulch by forestry crews.
There are additional options like the African Safari Wildlife Park in Port Clinton, which will be taking trees until Jan. 7 to feed to the zoo animals.
Since the wildlife park has more than 400 animals, Director Kelsey Keller said the trees make for tasty snacks and happy animals.
"(We) typically go through anywhere from 200 to 300 trees a winter, which seems like a lot," Keller said. "But when we have over 400 animals, that's not even one tree per animal."
She added that nothing will go to waste when it comes to the trees.
"All of the tree parts they don't eat, sometimes they leave the big parts of the trunks, those we will take out to our compost," Keller said. "We will turn that back into soil and we will use that throughout the park.:
A Stanford University study found Americans throw out 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year's. The calculations found that this additional waste equates to about one million extra tons of garbage per week. So, while the city or the park recycles your trees, AIME Cycling of Toledo can take care of your old and broken Christmas lights, owner Jeff Norden said.
"We re-melt down the copper and reuse the plastic coating," Norden said. "Some of the older bulbs contain mercury. So, they'll make sure the mercury is captured and not released into the atmosphere."
Anyone can take their old broken down Christmas lights to the Genoa Bank branch location, or even the AIM ECycling building, during lobby business hours, and drop them off for recycling. The collection will run until Jan. 14.
And the collection numbers are impressive so far, Norden said.
"We've collected 865 pounds," he said. "Shoutout to everybody in Sylvania, 380 pounds of that came from the Sylvania location."
All of these recycling options are free of charge.