Christmas Tree Recycling

Chris Heim from Davey's Atlanta office talks about the importance of recycling your Christmas tree after the holidays, the different ways you can do this and a program in Georgia he's been involved with that turns recycled Christmas trees into mulch for the community. Chris also talks about how he's cared for historical trees in Georgia and what his favorite one is.

In this episode we cover:

• Keep Georgia Beautiful Foundation - Bring One for the Chipper (0:50) 
• Tree recylcing options (2:08)
• What kind of mulch is produced? (3:03)
• New Orleans tree recycling (3:58)
• Removing decorations (5:07)
• Goats (6:21)
• How Chris started his job and why he enjoys it (7:07)
• Working on historic trees - Village Sentinel (9:15)
• Oak wilt in Georgia? (13:33)
• How Atlanta's season has been (14:10)
• Favorite trees for the south (15:11)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about Christmas tree recycling, read our blog, What to do with Christmas Trees after the Holidays, or watch our Talking Trees Live on Christmas Treecycling with Chris.
To learn more about the Bring One for the Chipper event, click here.
To learn more about the historic Village Sentinel tree, click here.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Companies Podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each episode showcases one of Davey's certified arborists sharing advice with everyone about caring for your trees and landscapes. We will talk about everything from introduce pests, seasonal tree care, deer damage, how to make your trees thrive, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. This week, I'm joined by Chris Heim. He is a District manager for the Davey Tree Expert Company in Atlanta. Chris, how are you doing?

Chris Heim: I'm doing great today. How are you, Santa?

Doug: [laughs] Yes, I'm wearing my Santa hat. You guys can't see it but Chris can because we are talking all about recycling Christmas trees. I know, Chris, there's something special you do down in Georgia, right, that Davey's involved in?

Chris: Yes, we are fortunate to be involved with Keep Georgia Beautiful and participating with the nation's largest Annual Christmas Tree Recycling program. We've been involved for, jeez, it's close to 30 years now, and with the corporate partners like Home Depot, local television affiliate here in Atlanta, Channel 11, those are the main sponsors of the program.

Doug: How do you recycle them through that program?

Chris: Our contribution with it is a partnership with the Home Depot and they supply their parking lots at the area Home Depots for a drop off site for Christmas trees. We keep those cleaned up for them and recycle the trees into mulch.

Doug: What is the name of it? It has a funny name, I read it before we came on.

Chris: It's called Bring One for the Chipper.

Doug: Yes, [laughs] that's great.

Chris: Yes.

Doug: When you're thinking, in general, about recycling that Christmas tree, what else can we do?

Chris: There's a lot of different ways you can recycle a Christmas tree per se. Obviously, turning it into mulch, getting it to somewhere where you can run it through a brush chipper and turn it into mulch. Cut it up, use it for outdoor fires, if you have room on your property, it makes great wildlife habitat. It could be left in the back corner of the property or something, the rabbits, birds, everything love it as it breaks down. There's a lot of arts and crafts people out there that are creative that do things with it, some people cut the limbs off and use the main trunk as borders for a landscape trail or something like that. There's a lot of different creative ways to use it.

Doug: One thing I wanted to ask you is when you do chip the tree, that's all good, the needles and everything, it just kind of gets all mulched up and it's all good?

Chris: Yes. It produces a product that, it's not your grade A double shredded mulch by any means. It's ground up Christmas trees, so there are a lot of needles and everything in it. It makes a great landscape base. A lot of people use it put down as a base, and then they'll top dress it with some kind of more aesthetically pleasing mulch, a pine straw, or something like that. It creates a great organic base.

Doug: Yes. In my property, I've got some land, every year, I'm just putting it out there for the rabbits you know?

Chris: Sure.

Doug: I don't know what that's doing for my garden, but it's certainly helping the rabbits. [laughs]

Chris: There's a lot of creative programs in the country, I was reading about new Orleans and how they've been using the Christmas trees over the years. They bundle them and they're dropping them off in the bayou areas to protect the shores basically and re-establish the wildlife refuge areas and it's pretty amazing, they've been doing this for about 25 years. Again, it creates habitat for birds and fish and crabs and crawfish and shrimp, but it's also protecting the shorelines.

Doug: I know also, I think they'll sink them, not necessarily there, but they'll sink them into a lake-

Chris: Oh, absolutely.

Doug: -as fish habitat. How does that work? Do they have to screw it onto something or bundle them?

Chris: Yes. Most of the things that I've seen where they do is they just tie like a cement block to it.

Doug: That makes sense.

Chris: They sink them with a cement block and creates great fish habitat.

Doug: Of course, before we do any of this, we are taking off all the tinsel, we are taking off any decorations, that's common sense but especially with the little stuff, if you're doing tinsel, you don't want that stuff out there, you don't want that running through the shredder, right?

Chris: Absolutely. They got to be completely clean. It's amazing what we see as far as tree stands go, homemade tree stands and six-inch spikes driven up the base of the tree and metal clamps and all that. That obviously cannot go through a brush chipper, it's designed to chip wood, not metal. It can be very unsafe.

Doug: I have to tell you that the tree stand that I grew up with was from somewhere in the 1930s and '40s. Every year, my dad had to spend about two hours out in the garage thinning down that bottom of that Christmas tree to get it in the stand and when I inherited that stand, my wife said, "Ah-ah, you can keep it, but we're getting a modern stand." Thank goodness I did because now, there's no problem. Anything else you can think of? Any other way to use the tree? I think we've covered most of it that I can think of.

Chris: I read that apparently, goats are very fond of certain pine trees, certain species of pine and a lot of farmers and staff will take a tree, and it's a great treat for the for goats. There's only specific varieties, I don't recommend if you have goats just to throw your Christmas tree out there unless you do a little bit of research and make sure it's going to be safe for them. I guess they are very fond of them.

Doug: Do you have a favorite type of tree that you pick every year for the holiday or does it matter to them?

Chris: Not really. [laughs] We've chipped up-

Doug: Oh gosh.

Chris: -probably in 30 years, probably a million Christmas trees, so at this point, they all look the same.

[laughter]

Doug: Tell me a little bit about why this job is right for you.

Chris: Like many people, I grew up outdoors camping and doing a lot of things like that, so being able to pursue a career outdoors was really important to me. I went to a two-year technical school in Southern Ohio for forestry, never really had my eyes on urban forestry or urban horticulture by any means. The last thing I wanted to do was be in a city but if things evolved and I hooked up with Davey Tree, and I was in Ohio and he said, "Well, we have a position down in Atlanta, Georgia." It's like, "Yes, I'll go check it out." I was young, threw my stuff in the car and figured I'd go work it temporarily till I decided my next pace. I've had a 38-year temporary job.

Doug: [laughs] Tell me about what you get out of this job, in general.

Chris: It's a wide variety of satisfaction, helping people solve their tree problems is probably number one, and going out, when we get a call, it's usually based on some kind of tree issue that somebody perceives on their property. It may be an issue, it may just be a natural environmental reaction to trees happen and everything's fine. Going out and troubleshooting, diagnosing and preparing a plan for care is what I get out of it the most. That's the most. Literally every tree, every property's different, so there's a lot of variety to it. I've had the opportunity, over the years, to work on some historic trees that I get a lot of satisfaction from and that's really fun.

Doug: Yes. Talk a little bit about that, that's interesting. What are we talking about? Just a 100-year-old tree or?

Chris: One of the most important ones we take care of, in fact, I just visited last week, it's in southeast Georgia and it's a 500-year-old plus live oak.

Doug: Wow.

Chris: That is one of the top three largest ones in the country and Davey Tree has had the honor of caring for it since the mid-1950s. Well, we have a long history with the tree, and I've personally been involved with it for about 30 years. It's just a gigantic specimen, it's limb span, it's like over half a football field and-

Doug: Wow.

Chris: -all the way around the entire canopy, it's like 160 feet from end to end, and it's just massive. It's old, it's this historic but fortunately, it's super healthy so just having involvement with that tree over the years is really cool.

Doug: It seems like a lot of responsibility though, that's a 500-year-old tree.

Chris: Yes, it is. I commend the owners that they have made a commitment like they have over all these years to care for this understanding that it's a piece of history. There's a book written about the history of it and everything. It's really cool to see that, and it's a living organism that you can go visit. It's not like a monument or something, it's really really satisfying.

Doug: I think the fact that you've been a steward for that tree for 30 years is pretty important stuff.

Chris: Yes. I take a lot of pride in that, so it's part of the family. I got pictures of my kids under it and everything. In fact, I even talked to the administrators when I was down there, I said, "You know what, in a few years, I'm going to have my retirement party under this tree." [laughs]

Doug: No kidding. That right there shows everybody the power of trees and that how we get connected with trees, that's amazing. What are your biggest concerns when dealing with a tree with that kind of provenance?

Chris: Really, obviously, because of where it's located on this property, it's on private property, but it's at a retirement home. The safety of the tree is of utmost importance. You don't want anything major failure to happen and cause any kind of issue there which they've taken very good care of it. They've invested a lot of money in this tree over the years to keep it as good as it is. I think that's our number one focus, really, for any time we go look at any tree is first identifying any defects or any conditions that would render that tree maybe a safety hazard, an unusual risk.

That's always in the forefront of any time you go look at a tree for a customer. It may not even be the reason they called you out there, but you do notice something that creates a hazard. I think, for me, that's number one, and then doing your research. You know not everybody knows everything. Bringing in experts, consulting with people on the care of a historic tree like this, and making sure we're addressing everything we need to address when we care for it.

Doug: Has oak wilt made its way to Atlanta? Is that a problem down there?

Chris: Not yet although it is a problem, especially with live oaks along the coast. We have our eyes open and are providing the care especially for this tree to make sure we're not predisposing it to anything like that, but so far, we haven't seen it in the Georgia area to my knowledge, but it's not far away.

Doug: What kind of season did you have this year?

Chris: Relatively wet. The last couple of years, we've had higher-than-average rainfall. Especially in the summer months, which we usually get the afternoon showers because the humidity builds up so much and everything, but the last couple of years, we've had significant rainfall.

Doug: What does that mean for the trees?

Chris: It's positive and negative. We've seen a lot of really good growth the last few years since we haven't been in drought or had long periods of drought, so that's been great as far as plant healthcare goes. Whenever you have a lot of moisture and a lot of humidity like we get through the summer months, it breeds a lot of disease issues. We've seen a lot of phytophthora a lot more than normal in the last couple of years. A lot of your leaf diseases have been pretty prevalent.

Doug: Well, I always like to ask arborists this, and since you're down south, tell me about a couple of favorites that you like to recommend. We always preface this with we know it, right tree, right place, but are there certain species that you really love that maybe don't get planted as much as you would like to or something that you really love?

Chris: Well, Elena' is an interesting area, and obviously, it's a large metropolitan area. We're in a transition area between north and south, and we have a lot of transplants from the north and the south. We see a lot of different species being planted here that are non-native. I'm old school, I'm a native tree person, and because they do well on our climate, which is we get hot weather, but we do get some cold weather, we get drought, but we get periods of a lot of rain, so it's a very tough area, but things grow well here.

That was the hard thing coming from northeast Ohio down to here. Man, things grow fast and not as much a favorite of species as I am of planting, or where you plant the plant because it does grow so fast. I see so many landscapes overgrown in five to 10 years. It's amazing and it's because people come from the north and come down here and don't realize how fast things are going to grow. A lot of the issues we deal with, it's usually from poor placement or overcrowding or things like that.

Doug: How about the wrong choice, because I'm just guessing that when you do transplant to Atlanta, you want the same trees that you were growing up north?

Chris: Sure. You see the occasional Colorado blue spruces knowing that it's going to have a real hard time and that 90 to 100 degree, in that heavy clay soil. Hemlocks, Canadian hemlocks, an hour and a half from here you get up into the Appalachian Mountains and they thrive. I've seen Native Canadian hemlocks up there are just beautiful. An hour and a half south, and you get down here into the clay and more heat and they struggle, they're really hard to grow here.

Same with like [unintelligible 00:17:34] and things like that. You'll see the exception to the rule around town, but most of the time, they don't do well. The same thing, like live oaks, I've seen live oaks in Atlanta, and they'll grow here, but very slow growing, very stunted.

Doug: Chris, I want to finish up with one last question. Tell me the best part of your job.

Chris: The best part? Seeing the end result. [laughs] No doubt, seeing the end result. The best satisfaction comes from when a crew is on a property working all day, and they completed their task and the customer's super happy and we walk away all with smiles on our faces.

Doug: Well, Chris, thanks so much for your time, and especially the story of that historic oak. I'm looking that up as soon as we get off our podcast here because I've got to see--

Chris: It's called the Village Sentinel.

Doug: All right, I'm looking it up. I encourage our listeners to look that up too, because that's got to be an amazing tree. Thanks again for your time.

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Chris: Doug, I appreciate it. You have a good Christmas.

Doug: You too. Boy, I'd really like to see that tree in the Atlanta area, wouldn't you? Wasn't that a wonderful story? Don't send that Christmas tree to the landfill. Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast. I hope you're having as much fun listening as I am hosting the show. Next week, we've got a fun show. It's a host of unique stories shared by arborists, and I've read a few already. You're going to like this. As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.

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[00:19:37] [END OF AUDIO]