Christmas Tree Collection 2025
On the weekend of 4th and 5th January, 40 adult volunteers braved the elements (bitter cold on Saturday and pouring rain on Sunday) to operate a kerbside collection of used Christmas trees across Weston Green and the surrounding areas. Nearly 1000 trees were collected using three vans operated by crews of four, working 4-hour shifts. Customers pay £10 (£15 for a large tree), plus extra donations if they are generous, and we take their tree from outside their house to be shredded and recycled. The funds raised are substantial for a small scout group (you can do the sums!) and this is what allows us to purchase and maintain expensive items like our scout group minibus and all the tents and equipment needed to run a program of camps for all ages and in across seasons.
We’ve been doing this for a decade or so now, and have got pretty good at the logistics of taking orders, creating van routes, dealing with customer issues, and so on. Going out in the rain to wrestle with Christmas trees on a winter weekend may not sound like much fun. But many of our volunteers participate enthusiastically every year and almost everyone enjoys the camaraderie of setting out as a team to meet a demanding challenge that is completely different to anything else they do in their lives. This year, we added some catering at the site where we pile up the trees for processing, so van crews could message in their orders for bacon and/or egg butties, teas and coffees, when the van was heading back to drop off its load of 20-30 trees.
Back at “Tree Towers” a much smaller, drier and warmer team manages customer service and van scheduling during the weekend, keeping the van crews productively busy and responding to any issues that come up (and there are always lots of issues!).