Posted on: Friday, December 27, 2002

Leftover Christmas trees fewer this year

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i's Christmas tree dealers, perhaps stung by ordering too many in past years, appear to have sold out most of their inventory without having to dump or destroy unsold fir and pine trees, a major recycling company here said yesterday.

"It has changed tremendously," Lorra Naholowa'a of Hawaiian Earth Products said yesterday. "It used to be that a lot of trees would come to us from the dealers in November if they had over-ordered, or if their refrigeration went out.

"Last year there was a significant decrease in that, and this year we have taken in only one or two containers of trees at our Windward site, and none at our main site in Campbell Industrial Park," she said.

Dealers have brought in few if any trees for recycling since Christmas, she said.

Recycling at $40 a ton with Hawaiian Earth is a lot cheaper for dealers than the $80 a ton or so they would pay to dump them at the city landfill.

And while the city has allowed as much as 10 percent of loads going to the landfill to be green waste, a 100 percent ban on green waste at the landfill will go into effect Jan. 17, she said.

Hawaiian Earth will receive many of the thousands of trees residents recycle, she said. The company grinds the trees up and gives away the mulch, but Naholowa'a warned yesterday that users of Christmas tree mulch should know it should be used for weed suppression and not put on other plants or mixed in planting soil. "It has such a high acid content it is toxic to other plants," she said. The company's processed compost product, however, can be used to improve soil without any danger to plants, she said.

To dispose of Christmas trees, residents can:

• Have trees hauled from curbside in scheduled green waste pick-ups,

• Drop trees at refuse and recycling centers in 'Ewa, La'ie, Wahiawa, Waimanalo, Waipahu and Wai'anae, or at city composting sites at Ke'ehi and Hawaiian Earth Products (Kailua or Kapolei),

• Take trees from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Jan. 11 to "treecycling" sites at Kailua Intermediate, Kaiser High, Kapalama Elementary and Kapolei Elementary schools; Mililani Maka'unulau, Waimea Falls and Waiau District parks; the Polynesian Cultural Center; UH-Manoa's Richardson Law School; the Wai'anae Coast Comprehensive Health Center; and Kapi'olani Community College.