Holiday Chopping - a new tradition?

A brand, spanking new year. What a perfect time to close the loop left over from last year. And it can help your neighbors, family, friends, heck maybe even the whole rest of the planet.

MulchFest.

It's the NYC Parks Department's way of recycling old Christmas trees into mulch for trees (and some hungry worms).

This past weeekend, I rode by bicycle (to recycle, yeah, I know) to Riverside Drive and 83rd Street to help out. I was greeted by the fresh scent of evergreens, hot coffee courtesy of one of the sponsors (Dunkin Donuts) and warm smiles from the other 8 volunteers.

Our job? Drag a tree off the pile, take off any leftover ornaments, then hand the tree to the guys at the chipper. They had chipper feeders who expertly slid trees into the mouth of the mulcher. (Hey, I saw that movie Fargo. I'm totally cool with letting professionals do the dangerous parts.)

At the end of 2-1/2 hours, we'd recycled the mountain of 260 trees (not including the artificial-scented one in the photo) into a molehill of green needles and brown twigs. It's a small part of MulchFest 2011, which recycled 16,665 trees total in all five boroughs.

I was surprised the trees're were light. Maybe because they're dried out. Four of the ones I grabbed still were in their metal stands. Had to take them off. Five had extra branches wired onto them. Untwisted that. But the biggest bummer were the six that had tinsel. Had a special holiday words going out to the Tinsel Inventor.

It was fun. But let me tell you, machines that make mulch ain't meek. About the only part I'd change for next year is bring earplugs.  Putting that on my list for Santa next year.

Think that's something you might enjoy? Maybe I'll see you there next year.