Correct disposal

How to give Christmas trees a “second life”

There are collection points for Christmas trees in the city of Graz and in many Styrian municipalities.

(Bild: Kronenzeitung)

The Christmas holidays are drawing to a close and most Styrian households are getting rid of their Christmas trees. However, if disposed of correctly, they are more than just waste. 

The sweets are slowly being cleared away, the presents underneath have long since been distributed anyway and the needles are increasingly migrating from the branches to the ground: just as the Christmas holidays are slowly coming to an end, Christmas trees in Styrian living rooms are also losing their festive splendor and it's time to dispose of them. Epiphany has become a tradition in many households. Those who follow tradition even more closely leave the fir tree standing until Candlemas on February 2, when, according to Christian belief, the Christmas season ends.

Christmas trees provide energy
Regardless of the time, correct disposal is important. After all, the 350,000 or so Christmas trees from Styrian households can also have a useful "afterlife". Processed as wood chips, for example, they can be burned in biomass power plants and turned into clean energy. "With the Styrian Christmas trees alone, we could supply the city of Bruck with sustainable energy for an entire month," says Styrian Agriculture Councillor Simone Schmidtbauer. So if you don't compost or burn the tree yourself at home, you should take it to a collection point, which are set up in many municipalities and especially in the city of Graz. It is important to remove all ornaments and decorative materials from the tree beforehand. Whatever you decide: Under no circumstances should the tree end up in the residual waste!

If the tree burns: Does the insurance pay?
In some households, the Christmas tree has already been involuntarily "disposed of" in advance - if it has burnt down. The resulting damage is only covered by insurance "if it was caused by a family member living in the household", explains consumer protection expert Herbert Erhart from the Chamber of Labor. It is also important to check whether your household/liability insurance also covers damage caused by gross negligence - which is often the case with Christmas tree fires.