Local residents will be able to put their withered Christmas trees to good use with Keep Gilmer Beautiful’s second annual Christmas Tree recycling program.
The community beautification group will hold a drive-thru Christmas tree dropoff event Saturday, Jan. 7, at the East Ellijay Lowe’s, 380 Highland Crossing. Real (no artificial) Christmas trees can be dropped off from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. There is no charge for bringing a tree.
Christmas trees will also be collected at two Carters Lake sites — the Doll Mountain and Dam Site Boat Ramps — from Dec. 26-Jan. 20.
The collected trees will be used in an ongoing Carters Lake project that’s providing fish habitat and bottom cover in the man-made lake.
“Fish like structure. That’s their home,” said Allen Earhart, Carters Lake ranger. “The trees will provide cover for these smaller fish, and will grow algae, which will provide nutrients for fish, invertebrates and the food chain all the way up.”
The trees also help in providing better bank fishing opportunities at the lake, Earhart noted. “Bank fishing is kind of a limited factor for Carters, which is a very hard lake to fish from the banks and be successful because of the depth. Most everybody who comes out here to fish is fishing from a boat,” he added.
Carters Lake staff have been using discarded Christmas trees for fish habitats the past eight or so years, but Keep Gilmer Beautiful has only hosted the tree recycling event one other time, this past January. More than 100 trees were collected between that first dropoff event at Lowe’s and the Carters Lake collection points. “That figure surpassed anything that we predicted,” said Karen Vitelli, Keep Gilmer Beautiful member. “It was good to see our community cares about recycling and will take the time to bring (their trees) back for recycling instead of just throwing them away.”