Frankfurt/Main (dpa/lhe) - One person's rubbish is another's treasure: Unsold Christmas trees are used a second time at Frankfurt Zoo. The conifers are used as food or toys in the animal enclosures. "The rhino takes it to play, bears like to nibble on it," said Christine Kurrle from Zoo Frankfurt to the German Press Agency. Christmas trees that have already been indoors or that have been decorated are not suitable for this, as leftover decorations could get into the enclosure. But there were more donations from dealers alone than could be used.
Private individuals in Hesse, on the other hand, can often have their Christmas trees picked up by youth fire brigades after two years of corona restrictions. "The youth fire brigades are again actively collecting," said Markus Potthof, state youth fire brigade warden in Hesse. The campaigns are particularly widespread in rural areas. In the big cities, a nationwide collection of Christmas trees is usually not possible. There are too many trees for too few youth firefighters.
In Frankfurt, citizens have several options for disposing of their Christmas trees: the city names the brown organic waste bin, the gray residual waste bin or with the help of street cleaning. The prerequisite is that the trees are freed from all ornaments and shortened to pieces of a maximum of one meter. In addition, the Frankfurter Entsorgungs- und Service GmbH (FES) offers collection tours with fixed dates in individual parts of the city. From Monday (January 9) to January 27, a special vehicle will be used that only collects Christmas trees, it said.
In Wiesbaden, the disused Christmas trees will be picked up directly from the properties from next Monday (January 9th) to January 20th. There is only one collection date per property, which is marked with a Christmas tree symbol in the waste calendar, as announced by the municipal waste disposal company ELW. Because they are processed into compost, the city asks that ornaments be carefully removed. In some Wiesbaden districts, the youth fire brigades will pick up the trees on January 7th and 8th. Christmas trees can be parked at the roadside.
