Every year, hundreds of Christmas trees are cast out of homes and taken to the tip or, alternatively, just left in gardens for days or weeks as the normal routine of life kicks back in after the festive period.
In Matlock, local charity Ashgate Hospice offers its local community a ‘Treecycle’ service, enabling households to pay £15 to have their trees removed in a hassle-free way that is also good for the environment. Each tree is chipped and recycled, offering a sustainable disposal, as well as raising important funds so that the hospice can continue to provide end of life care for its patients.
In order to provide this service, Ashgate Hospice has a large-scale operation on its hands, and the charity relies on help from volunteers with the means to lend a hand. Ashgate Hospice runs the logistics, planning routes accordingly for people to follow, picking up the trees one by one, to then take to a local farm to be converted into biomass fuel.
The conversion of the trees into biomass fuel is a known way of making them productive after they have served their intended purpose. The trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, using photosynthesis to help them grow. When a tree in the wild dies, it rots and a lot of the carbon is released back into the air as carbon dioxide, as well as potentially producing methane too, which is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. By using biomass as a source of energy, that energy is used in a productive way rather than it being lost to nature.
Compared to burning fossil fuels which release carbon into the atmosphere, burning biomass fuels is intercepting a cycle that is already taking place rather than disrupting carbon reserves that would have stayed inside the Earth untouched for a very long time to come.
Recently, MVIS’ own Anne Ashman, Sean Brown and Ben Ashman were amongst those volunteers during the 2nd weekend of January 2022, collecting 29 trees for Ashgate Hospice in the Chesterfield and Matlock community, helping the charity to raise the equivalent of £435 in tree collections.
Furthermore, Ashgate also utilised one of MVIS’ VMS-A units without cost, to help spread the awareness of the campaign. Located in the car park of a popular local supermarket, the VMS-A provided maximum exposure to the message and helped further in raising the much needed funds that allows Ashgate to continue offering their compassionate service.
This initiative follows a long line of fundraising activities that MVIS has conducted for Ashgate Hospice. Last year, MVIS contributed over £11,000 in a combination of financial donations from fundraisers and gifts in kind, in the form of portable variable message signs to help with raising awareness.
Anne Ashman, UK Group Commercial and Operations Director commented:
“It’s great to be working with Ashgate Hospice on a scheme that not only helps them, but also helps the community and the environment.
“It’s rare you come across an opportunity to do all 3 in one initiative and helping these trees to be recycled gives us peace of mind that they are being useful – even after they are no longer wanted by those who purchased them.”
Anne concluded:
“Taking part in the Treecycle this year was hard work, but very rewarding and a lot of fun. As we continue into 2022, we are all excited to see what other fundraising ideas we can give the MVIS touch.”
