BARNSTABLE – The Barnstable Department of Public Works is wasting no time after the holiday season, offering residents the chance to dump their Christmas trees.
“What we do is we grind them up and compost and turn them into mulch. That’s a program we’ve offered for a number of years and we’ll continue to offer. We want to get them as soon as possible after the holiday and not have them linger but we will take them for a number of months,” said Dan Santos, Barnstable Department of Public Works Director.
Falmouth is also offering residents the opportunity to recycle their trees for free at the compost facility on Blacksmith Shop Road.
Santos said they have some guidelines for the trees that are being dropped off.
“We want to make sure they are really cleaned off. We don’t want any garland or tinsel or any ornaments or anything like that. That just fouls up the equipment and the compost ultimately,” he said.
Barnstable residents can drop off their trees for up to eight weeks at the Solid Waste and Recycling Center on Flint Street in Marstons Mills.
“It’s a big town and we get an awful lot of these. It’s really the best way to manage them because we don’t frankly have a lot of room over there to be piling these up. So we take care of them pretty quickly,” he said.
