What Happens to the Rockefeller Tree After Christmas
The enormous Christmas tree that lights up Rockefeller Center each year is one of the most iconic visuals of the holiday season.
The 74-foot-tall Norway Spruce in Rockefeller Center will be recycled in partnership with Habitat For Humanity. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911
But one has to wonder about the tree’s story. Where did it come from, and what will happen to it after the holiday season has come and gone?
This year’s tree is a 74-foot-tall Norway Spruce donated by the Acton family from Mahopac, N.Y. It’s approximately 75 years old and weighs about 12 tons. The tree sheds its light over downtown Manhattan from Nov.30 through Jan. 7, and millions of locals and tourists flock to Rockefeller Plaza to share in the awe striking holiday cheer.
While standard treecycling may not be a viable option for the holiday giant, this king-sized cheer-giver will still be recycled after the season.
Since adopting a more eco-friendly model in 2007, Rockefeller Center has partnered with Habitat for Humanity to reclaim their trees’ wood for building materials.
Lumber from the first tree was used to build a Habitat house in Mississippi for a family who lost their home after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Wood from the following trees helped to construct multifamily condominium complexes in Brooklyn, N.Y. and Stanford, Conn.
In addition to recycling the wood from the gigantic tree, Rockefeller Center has taken drastic steps to make its festive lighting more earth-friendly, too.
The tree is typically lit with five miles of lighting, and as you can imagine, all those lights use up a huge amount of energy. But since 2007, the tree has been lit exclusively with LED lights, which draw a fraction of the power traditionally required by the tree.
By switching to eco-friendly lighting, Rockefeller Center has managed to decrease the tree’s daily energy consumption from a massive 3,510 kwH per day to a significantly-less massive 1,297 kwH per day. Hundreds of solar panels atop one of the Rockefeller buildings help power the new LEDs, making daily operation of the tree more energy efficient than ever before.
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What You Didn’t Know About the Rockefeller Christmas Tree
As of June 17th 2011 we have upgraded our comment system to use Facebook comments.
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Grace
posted on January 8th, 2011 at 9:38 am
The scale of the Rockefeller Christmas tree is massive – it’s good to see that in the true Spirit of the Season lumber will be used for Habitat instead of being wasted – and that more energy conservative lighting is being used. Thinking about the impact of all the little Christmas trees in millions of homes is a bit daunting… thanks for the recycle solution link with practical options to consider.