This article is part of HuffPost’s Reclaim campaign, an ongoing project spotlighting the world’s waste crisis and how we can begin to solve it.
If you want to get in one last good deed this year, here’s one easy way to do it.
Siblings Dan and Morgan Sevigny, founders of Christmas Tree Brooklyn, will come to your house to pick up your tree and take it to get recycled. What’s more, they’ll also take any items you want to donate, from clothes to toys to canned food, and deliver them to Covenant House, a shelter for homeless young adults.
The service, available to residents of New York City, charges $49 to remove a 3- to 6-foot-tall tree, and the price goes up after that, depending on the tree’s height.
Since 2011, thousands of people have used the service, either to order a Christmas tree delivered to their home before the holiday, or to have it picked up after. But this is the first year the siblings have offered to take items for donation.
“It’s so important to help those in need in your community,” Dan Sevigny told The Huffington Post. “And this is such an easy way to do that.”
So far they’ve raised almost $20,000 worth of clothes and goods for the shelter.
The siblings are also committed to recycling all of the trees they pick up.
“We grew up in a national park in Maine,” Sevigny told HuffPost. “So we’ve always had a strong sense of environmental responsibility.”
The pair brings the trees to the city’s mulching events, where the trees get chopped into mulch to use in green spaces across the five boroughs.
In New York City, it’s actually really easy to recycle your tree: The city has designated parks where you can bring your tree to get it chopped up into mulch. The city will also recycle any trees left on the curb, weather permitting, from Jan. 3-14. And unlike the siblings’ service, the city’s offerings are free.
So why would anyone pay for someone else to recycle their tree if they can just leave it outside?
“It’s convenient,” Sevigny said. “Trees get dry, make a huge mess, leaving needles in the house, stairs, lobby ― landlords get mad. We clean it all up as we leave.”
This year, the siblings also delivered a Christmas tree to Covenant House, at no cost. Some young adults at the shelter said it was their first time touching a real one.
“It feels warm, comfortable,” 18-year-old Destiny told Fox News. “I feel like it’s home.”
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