Johnson County residents will have the chance to put their Christmas tree to good use, even after the holiday is over.
The Johnson County Recycling District is collecting Christmas trees dropped off at four locations—two in the Center Grove area, one in Franklin and one in Trafalgar—starting today and continuing through Jan. 10.
Trees must be stripped of tinsel and ornaments and cannot be in plastic bags, said Karla Coffey, deputy director for the Johnson County Recycling District.
Staff members from the recycling district collect the trees and deliver them to McDaniel’s Tree Service, a Greenwood-based company. The tree service then turns them into mulch, meaning their use won’t be limited to being a decoration in someone’s living room, Coffey said.
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“We don’t want trees to be burned, for one thing,” Coffey said. “This is a great way to have them be reused. They won’t be going to a landfill that way. A lot of times, people who bring trees are city or apartment residents; they don’t have another way to get rid of trees and it’s just better for the environment to have a tree be mulched and decomposed.”
The tree collection is for residents, not for businesses. Typically, people drop off between 600 and 800 trees at the collection sites each year.
There is one change this year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Coffey said.
“We used to use the Johnson County fairgrounds,” she said. “There’s COVID testing at the fairgrounds and the testing area where they enter is where we used to collect trees. There could be a few hundred people coming through there a day, so COVID has changed Christmas tree recycling.”
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Christmas tree collection for recycling will take place today through Jan. 10 at the following locations:
- Johnson County Shrine Club: 751 W. King Street, Franklin (behind Ken’s Auto Electric)
- Center Grove High School: 2717 S. Morgantown Road, Greenwood (near the tennis courts and baseball field)
- Indian Creek Intermediate School: 1000 S. Indian Creek Drive, Trafalgar (southwest corner near the football field)
- McCarty Mulch: 100 Bluffdale Road (off State Road 37 in the Center Grove Area)
Note: Trees at McCarty Mulch must be dropped off during business hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Source: Johnson County Recycling District
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