Recycling

Here's a typical, topical and local plea to recycle:

Councillor Stan Waddington, the county council's cabinet project champion for waste, said: "Don't throw your Christmas trees away. If you are not planting them back in the garden, chop them up and take them to your local household recycling centre.

Let's say it would be a 10 mile round trip to the rather unpleasant recycling centre. I used one of the online calculators to find that  it would cost about 200g of carbon - not to mention actual £££.

Let's think of some ways to reduce this:

Don't have a Christmas Tree at all - my system - zero carbon - bah humbug!

This is simple and effective. Unlikely to catch on though as the Norwegian military-industrial complex :-) are likely to oppose it tooth and nail - they have more spare trees than people. Ok, most trees in the UK are locally sourced but there's still commercial interests pushing you to buy them.

Suppose the county council sent round a (small) fleet of lorries on January 7th collecting the trees put out by residents?

The the total carbon would be less but seems even less likely. The council actually introduced a garden waste bin collection scheme which might seem ideal.  They were surprised at the low take-up rate. I wasn't. They charged £36/year and gave you an enormous brown bin! This scheme replaced a free garden waste bag scheme.

Doh!