With the festive season officially over, the centrepiece of the city's celebrations has been 'treecycled'.

Each year, at the end of the Christmas celebrations, the tree at the front of the City Hall is cut down and sent away to be turned into compost, for use in the city's parks.

The lights and other festive decorations were removed, before the tree itself - a 45-foot tall Norway spruce from Hillsborough - was chopped into small sections and chipped.

The council leads by example with the 'treecycling' of the City Hall tree – and is encouraging the people of Belfast to do likewise and make helping the environment a New Year's resolution everyone can fulfill, and benefit from.

-- Advertisement --

Latest figures show that the recycling rate for the Belfast City Council area so far in 2007-08 is 23 per cent – slightly above target and up four per cent on last year. Residents are being urged to keep the 'reduce, reuse and recycle' message in mind as the new year gets under way.

Councillor Cathal Mullaghan, Chairman of the council's Health and Environmental Services Committee: "This time last year, we were celebrating the fact that Belfast had broken through the 20 per cent mark for the first time. A year on, and we are continuing to push up the recycling rate which is most welcome.

"The Christmas and New Year period is a time when a lot of additional waste is created – from packaging to paper, cards and glass bottles to extra food waste, and up to 75 per cent of this can be recycled. And now that the festive season has come to an end, we would remind people that they can also recycle their real Christmas trees at any of our recycling centres."

Trees can be left at any of the council's four recycling centres - at Park Road in south Belfast, Alexandra Park in north Belfast, Blackstaff Way in west Belfast and Palmerston Road in the east of the city - during normal opening hours, details of which can be found on the council website www.belfastcity.gov.uk/recycle.

(GK/JM)