What to do with that leftover Christmas tree? Give it to the fish.

I know a few people that drive around and pick some trees up as people throw them out. One has a pond on his property that he throws a few trees in it each year for fishing, but we also have a big outdoor fire and burn a couple too. The flame goes up 20ft in the air. Especially the ones that people have sprayed with hairspray.

Around the US, many park districts and wildlife areas collect used or unsold Christmas trees to recycle as fish habitats. It works this way: at the end of the holidays, real Christmas trees, stripped of all their ornaments, are bundled up together and thrown in lakes to create reefs. These reefs give young fish a place to hide from larger fish, provide new nesting grounds, and also allow for the growth of algae. And that helps the ecosystem as a whole: the algae feed aquatic bugs, bugs feed little fish, and little fish feed large fish.