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Written by The McCarthy's Team on January 18, 2018

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You may have seen our vans busily dashing about North Leeds last week, on a bit of a mission.

For the fifth year, the wonderful St Gemma’s Hospice ran its Christmas Tree Recycling scheme – and we were over the moon to provide a couple of happy helpers from our removals team (and a van) to offer a helping hand with the collection service again.

Over Christmas, the UK apparently creates 30 per cent more waste than usual (not hard to imagine with the volume of wrapping paper, Christmas cards and Quality Street wrappers from just our home alone!). This includes six million real Christmas trees that suddenly reach the end of their ‘useful’ life come 5^th January.

Of course, lots of people re-plant the tree in their garden, which is great – but many more have them dropping their final needles on the patio for weeks to come, unsure quite what to do with it next. There’s no more sorry a sight than a browning Christmas tree left to die – no wonder January can seem so miserable after all the glitz and sparkle of the festive season! Apparently 250 tonnes of Christmas trees are just thrown into the normal waste, destined for landfill. What a waste!

As with most things – the correct solution is, of course, to recycle it! They can often be made into chippings for parks and woodlands, or turned into compost to help some more lovely trees grow.

Anyway, it seems lots of you in Leeds got the message, and the St Gemma’s service collected 1,400 trees which have been sent off to start a new life. That’s also 100 trees more than last year – no wonder our team looked so tired by the end of the week!

Thanks to the donations people made to have their tree taken away, £18,000 has been made for St Gemma’s, to support the wonderful, and vital, work they do – £3,000 more than 2017, so well done everyone!

This event also marked a very special occasion for us. As you may know, 2018 is McCarthy’s 50^th birthday – and as part of the celebrations we plan on doing 50 good deeds across the year, helping the community and our customers to make the year a little bit brighter. So, we’re delighted that helping St Gemma’s, a cause very close to our heart, was our first good deed of the year. We look forward to the other 49… watch out for announcements about how you can get involved…