A few weeks after the holidays end that Christmas tree that brightened up your living room and brought warm fuzzy feelings will turn into a scraggly menace that spews dry pine needles all over your carpet. Before your tree starts terrorizing your living room and ruining the fun holiday memories you made with it, you could recycle it with Denver's annual treecycle program.
From January 4 to January 15, the city will be picking up trees to recycle. Here is how to participate:
Step 1: Make sure your tree is a real tree and not an artificial one. Artificial trees cannot be recycled.
Step 2: Remove all of the lights and ornaments and wrestle the tree out of the tree stand.
Step 3: Put the tree outside in your normal trash set-out location on your normal trash day before 7 a.m. Set it at least two feet away from other waste containers.
Step 4: Pick up some free mulch your tree helped make at the city's annual compost sale in the spring.
If watching your tree slowly waste away through mid-January is some sort of annual tradition for you, you can still recycle your tree by dropping it off yourself at the Cherry Creek Recycling Drop-off (7352 E. Cherry Creek Drive South).
This article has been updated for 2021 dates.
