Rapid City, S.D. (KELO) — As the holiday season comes to a close, Christmas clutter begins to add up.
Rapid City’s Christmas Tree recycling program kicked off today to help out.
If you want to clear out your homes from the Christmas mayhem, you can do so right now.
“During that time everybody can bring down any natural Christmas Trees. Greenery, wreaths, you know whatever they’ve got going on. But we do just ask that you guys strip everything from it before you put it in the pile.” Solid Waste Education and Outreach Coordinator Ria Hannon said.
In addition to these trees, Christmas Lights can be recycled at over 14 locations across Rapid City.
“So the reason that we have this separate program is because people think that they are recyclable and put them in their curbside bin, recycle or trash, and what happens is when it comes out here, it gets super tangled up in our equipment.” Hannon Said
When recycling your tree, you’ll have to remove the lights, but to also remove any plastic, metal, or wooden tree stands. And on the first day of this recycling program, we’ve already seen dozens of Christmas trees dropped off here at the West side recycling site.
Last year residents in Pennington County brought in and recycled over three and a half tons of Christmas lights and extension cords. And already we’ve already seen dozens of Christmas trees dropped off here at the West side recycling site.
“Three, four, five hours of our operator’s time to make sure that they untangle this. It would be really easy just to prevent that from happening and take an extra step and remove that before you dump your Christmas tree.” Public Works Coordinance Officer Sean Jewett Said
Once any recycling bin is too full, Solid Waste asks you to come back the next day when there is more room.
If you want to donate and recycle your Christmas lights and trees, you can do so up until January 31st.
