The Carbon County Environmental Education Center is once again collecting Christmas trees.

The trees will be repurposed — re-gifted, even — since they’ll be used to create mulch for the center’s trails and gardens, and mulch to give away to those who are seeking it.

“We usually get a few hundred trees every year,” said Susan Gallagher, the center’s chief naturalist. “One year we actually got around 700 trees. The nice thing is that it seems to be such a community effort.”

Not only are people recycling their Christmas trees, the center receives help from local tree services and a Carbon County organization.

Day’s Tree Service of Jim Thorpe and Dunn’s Tree Service of Summit Hill donate their time to shred the trees.

“They chip them and then we can offer the mulch to the public if they want to take it,” Gallagher said.

The center also received funding from Leadership Carbon several years ago. With it, the center purchased equipment, signs and other items.

“Sometimes municipalities will set up collection days where they will tell people to put their trees on the curb. They’ll go around, collect them and bring them all here,” Gallagher said. “Those are some ways the community gets involved.”

The recycling program began about 30 years ago.

“It’s just nice to see everybody pull together to get this done,” she said.

Gallagher said trees must be free of decorations.

“Especially tinsel,” she noted. “Animals can ingest that, or birds can get entangled in that. It can be a hazard and that’s the last thing we want.”

Those bringing a large quantity of trees should call in advance.

“Also, it’s only trees. We don’t take any kind of brush or limbs,” Gallagher added.

For more information, call the center at 570-645-8597.