CHARLOTTE, N.C.,None — Charlotte city crews are picking up the Christmas trees people are leaving at the curb this week, and those dried-out trees are actually providing a source of revenue.
Discarded Christmas trees are taken to Compost Central in west Charlotte. The Mecklenburg County facility will process 40,000 trees in the next few weeks, along with other yard debris that comes in all year long.
A massive machine grinds it all up into wood chips and mulch. The recycling saves space in landfills.
Yard Waste Manager Steve Elliot said the best part is the taxpayer cost, because there isn't any.
"We're an enterprise fund, which means we don't rely on taxpayer money," Elliot said. "We're funded by the sale of products and tipping fees."
Tipping fees are what they charge people to dump yard waste there, and they generate 65 percent of their revenue from those fees. The other 35 percent is from the sale of mulch and compost, and they sell a lot of wood chips to companies to help fuel their boilers.
The operation has been growing right along with Charlotte. Five years ago, it generated $1.8 million from tipping fees and mulch sales. By 2011, it topped out at $2.3 million.
As the income grows, the operation can expand without a taxpayer burden.
Eyewitness News explained that to David Keith, who was dumping some of his own yard waste on Tuesday.
"That's the way the rest of the government needs to operate, if it can," Keith said. "It's keeping it from going into the landfill, so they won't have to find more locations and build new ones, which nobody wants."
Elliot said it's something the county can be proud of.
"There are very few of them in North Carolina," he said. "It's great we can sustain ourselves without having to go to the taxpayers for money."
For more information on Christmas tree pickup, click here.
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