JACKSON, Wyo. — Teton County is encouraging community members to compost Christmas trees for free through Jan. 31 instead of tossing them out, providing both local landscaping materials and reducing negative impacts on the environment.
According to a Teton County press release, evergreens can be composted in town instead of trucked and buried with trash in a landfill. Trees dropped off for the landfill also incur a minimum drop fee of $10 per drop, with $144 per ton for landfill-bound garbage.
However, all composted Christmas trees must be cleaned of ornaments, tinsel and lights.
“We do really stress that they do need to be naked trees,” Cynthia Harger, public engagement and waste diversion outreach specialist for Teton County Integrated Solid Waste and Recycling (TCISWR), tells Buckrail. “They need to be cleaned of everything you don’t want ending up in the soil, which could also hurt the [composting] equipment and the people running it.”
According to Harger, composted trees will be chipped down at TCISWR and turned into mulch in partnership with Terra Firma Organics.
Terra Firma Organics will then sell the finished product as bags of mulch, or sometimes even as bark for landscaping, typically around the area.
Harger points out that, like a lot of communities, Teton County doesn’t have its own landfill; all trash gets shipped out in trucks and travels about 100 miles to a landfill in Idaho, where it’s buried.
“Composting is a way to protect valuable resources and get them back into the earth,” Harger tells Buckrail.
Clean trees can be dropped off at the designated spot at the Rodeo Grounds, or at the Trash Transfer Station for free through Jan. 31.
