In the second week of January, disused Christmas trees were collected in Gsteig, Saanen and Lauenen. But what actually happens to them after they have fulfilled their intended purpose in our living rooms?

Throughout the year, small fir trees are of little importance. At Christmas, however, we decorate them richly and even share our homes with them – until the old year makes way for the new. Then they soon have had their day and end up in front of our doors or on the collection site. But what actually happens to these trees after they have done their Christmas duty?

In Lauenen, people bring their disused Christmas trees to a collection point. Saanen collects them with the refuse collection service. Eventually, all the trees end up in the same place, the Sortiergesellschaft AG (SORSAG) in Saanen. There they are first piled up in a heap. Florin Shkoza, a long-time employee of SORSAG, reveals that four tonnes were collected this January. “That sounds like a lot, but this year we received about a quarter fewer Christmas trees than usual,” he says. “That’s because, due to the Corona measures, not all the tourists who normally celebrate Christmas here came.”

Each tree is individually scanned for metal, such as wires or nails, as well as plastic. SORSAG needs to remove these objects and dispose them separately, which causes additional work and costs. “For a while there were entire Christmas decorations in quite a few Christmas trees,” Shkoza recalls. “This year and last year, however, that has improved a lot, and we are very grateful for that.”

Once sorted, the wood from the trees is chopped into two different sizes by an external employee of Gebrüder von Grünigen Schönried AG. He shreds a first, minor part of the trees: SORSAG then puts these wood chips into the compost to make compost soil.

The majority of the Christmas trees, on the other hand, are coarsely chopped. From now on, Energieholz AG (ENHOSAG) is responsible for the wood chips: they store them and transport them to the incineration plant on the site. Around 50,000m3 of energy wood are produced on site each year and burned by another company, the Genossenschaft Elektra Baselland (EBL), in the Saanen and Schönried heating plants. Several hundred buildings are thus supplied with ecological heat via the Saanen-Gstaad and Schönried district heating networks.

Gsteig
The journey of the Christmas trees from Gsteig-Feutersoey is not exactly the same. The residents of the municipality still have time to deposit their trees at the collection point in Feutersoey – after that, the municipality is responsible for sorting foreign objects made of metal or plastic and delivering the recyclable trees to MvS AG. “We only get the wood from the municipality that we can really use,” explains employee Philipp Perreten, “that makes our work easier.”

MvS AG chops the wood into small pieces and then transports it to the storage hall of the Gsteig heating network, where it dries for three months together with other wood chips. Only then is the energy wood ready to be burned in the EBL’s Gsteig plant to generate heat and to provide comfortably warm living rooms in the surrounding area.

Thus, long after Christmas, a breath of our Christmas trees returns to our homes: in the form of heat.

BASED ON AVS/NADINE HAGER