Did you know that a Christmas tree can power two hot showers?

The Danish District Heating company has some advice for residents on how to recycle the holiday firs

Christmas has passed and New Year’s Eve is upon us. Soon, we will be faced with the issue of dismantling the Christmas trees and disposing productively of all that extra wood. In Denmark, at least, there is a solution.

The Danish District Heating (Dansk Fjernvarme) company has issued an appeal to residents to hand their trees to recycling sites where they can be turned into chips and sent to the heating plant as fuel. Apparently, one Christmas tree can provide enough energy to heat up two hot showers. Not bad, considering that Danish people put about 1.5 million trees every winter, and you can do the maths as to how many hot showers that would produce.

Christmas trees have more heating value because they are resinous

“Our Christmas trees give really good energy, both when they are in the living room and decorate and spread cosiness, and when you and your family sing Christmas carol around the tree, but also after Christmas, when the Christmas trees can be used for district heating in waste incineration plants or in district heating plants, which uses wood chips,” explains consultant Maria Dahl Hedegaard from Dansk Fjernvarme.

She adds: “It is a far better utilization of our biomass resource to use them for heating instead of them being left for recycling. In this way, they release the same CO2 as if they were used as fuel - but we utilize the energy produced.”

Christmas trees are considered softwood. That means they are less dense and compact than hardwood, yet, surprisingly they actually have more calorific value. That’s because they are also rich in resin.

The resin is distributed in both bark, wood and needles, but the content is high in the needles, so it is an advantage that as many needles as possible enter the fire.