Christmas Tree Collection

Every year, on a wet or chilly weekend in early January, you’ll find us out and about, dragging unwanted Christmas trees off to be shredded into chippings for use as fuel for renewable electricity generation. The generous donations that local households give us for doing this are our main source of funding for vehicles and equipment.

Our annual Christmas tree collection is the group’s only regular fundraising activity, and we ask all parents to get involved.  Each year, we raise a few thousand pounds for the group, while providing a useful and much appreciated service to the local community.  The money we raise helps us to keep our membership fees low, making scouting accessible to everyone in the community and one of the best value activities available for young people in the Weston Green area.  It also allows us to buy, insure and maintain vital equipment including tents, camping gear, minibuses, vans and trailers.

Parents can help in a variety of roles:

• before and during the event, we need people to organise parents and other volunteers into collection teams, arrange vehicles and insurance, check address data, eliminate any uncertainty about tree locations, plan collection routes, take bookings and payments
• on the day, we head out in teams of three – a driver, a navigator and a tree lugger – in our own vehicles and rented vans.  Each team does a four-hour session.  The collection is done in three or four shifts over a single weekend, and we collect around 1,000 trees in that time!

In 2025, a team of around 40 parent volunteers worked together to collect 1000 trees between 8am on Saturday and 2pm on Sunday.  We are extremely grateful to Sandown Park racecourse, who generously allowed us to use their land to pile all the trees up.  We used a Surrey-based company, Greenwood’s Tree Contractors, to process the trees and convert them to shredded green waste. This has very low value, but we have found people who will take it and put it to good use.  In 2025, the shredded trees were blended with other biomass and used as a feedstock for electricity generation. In some previous years, they have been used as a feedstock for commercial compost manufacture.

We have many repeat customers, and they love the service.

• Thank you so much for your reliable and efficient service – J.T., Esher
• Fantastic service, thank you and hope it raised lots for the scouts – G.H., Weston Green
• Perfect service as always – A.R., Thames Ditton

If you’d like us to collect your Christmas tree once Christmas is over, please click here to add your email address to our mailing list.  Booking opens in early November each year.  You can book at www.collectmytree.co.uk.

Relevant documents

Public-liability-insurance-certificate-2025-26

Risk Assessment for Christmas tree collection activities

Waste Carrier Registration