Recycled Christmas Trees

Our little city offers Christmas tree recycling. Since trees are not picked up by the garbage collector - unless you chop the tree to pieces and stuff it into our large 50 gallon can if you don’t have a wood-stove to burn it in – you need to bring it to that recycling center. There, about 500 to a 1,000 used trees are waiting to be shred into chips by our municipal employees who will be feeding the mound of discarded trees into an industrial-size wood chipper. I did a rapid calculation on how much this operation might cost us, the taxpayers, and it seems to be around $15 to $30 per tree, a hefty price to pay for the festive decoration. Why shouldn’t the city levy an equivalent tax on any Christmas tree sold in the immediate area to defray that non-essential expense? The other side of the argument is to either go with a potted tree that can be planted after Christmas, go plastic or skip the tree thing altogether. All good alternative options…