Initiatief.
Last year we started recycling Christmas trees in collaboration with the Municipality of Amsterdam. In Amsterdam there was a lot of uncertainty about what to do with the Christmas tree in January. We are also active in other large cities in the Netherlands with projects / our collection service and we saw that things were better organized there, especially due to the many return points. In the summer of 2020, we had several conversations with the Municipality of Amsterdam to create return points and asked whether there could be clarity for Christmas tree owners about how you can offer the Christmas tree for recycling.

Return locations
At the beginning of this year, the Municipality of Amsterdam has been working with return points for a long time and the city already looked a lot cleaner. It didn't go completely smoothly, but the first step has been taken. In January 2020 we were able to reopen our sales point at Stadionplein as a manned return point. We really enjoyed doing it and noticed that the neighborhood thought it was a great initiative. If you handed in the Christmas tree to us, you received a product made from a Christmas tree. For example, we had made a bee hotel from the trunk of the Christmas tree and a room scent from our Christmas trees.

Recycling.
There are of course a lot of Christmas trees in Amsterdam and small initiatives are very nice, but what happens to the largest part of the Christmas trees? As mentioned above, special Christmas tree collection points have now been created, when you offer the Christmas tree there, the Municipality of Amsterdam will collect them with special Christmas tree trucks. The Christmas tree trucks drive directly to the green recycling in the Western harbor area. There the Christmas trees are shredded and the wood pieces and the needles are separated. The needles of the Christmas tree are stored for a number of months, leaving fine compost. The fine compost is used in the spring by local gardeners (for gardens, parks, etc.). The wood chips are used for green energy in Amsterdam