SOMERSET residents can log on now for a charity collection of their real Christmas tree.

Several charities offer kerbside tree collections in return for a donation, making it an easy way to say goodbye your festive fir while raising money for good causes.

The charities include:

  • Dorothy House Hospice Care, covering the Frome and Shepton Mallet area. Collections must be booked before midnight on Monday, January 3.
  • St Margaret’s Hospice Care covering the Bridgwater, Taunton, Wellington and Yeovil areas. Collections must be booked before midnight on Monday, January 10.

Collections from both must be booked in advance HERE.

Collections may also be available from other local charities and groups, environmental schemes, zoos or farms needing trees as food or fun for animals.

The greenest way to dispose of your real Christmas tree is to chip it and compost it at home if you can or use it to attract wildlife to your garden.

If that is not possible, all 16 Somerset recycling sites will take decoration-free trees in the garden waste skip. They will be composted to produce soil conditioner.

Recycling sites are open for their usual winter hours except New Year’s Day and are also the best place to take large loads of cardboard and paper gift wrap.

Subscribers to the paid-for garden waste service can leave their tree next to their green bin for their first collection in 2022. To be collected, trees must be decoration-free and no taller than six feet tall with a trunk diameter of no more than six inches.

As usual, garden waste collections do not take place over the festive fortnight but are scheduled start again in the week beginning January 10.