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Tree-mendous Charity Work Continues

After spending the festive period lighting up your homes and housing Santa’s gifts to you, Christmas Trees are left next to the dust bin to decompose and hurt the environment. Thanks to the team at Ashgate Hospice, they have found an innovative way to raise money for the Hospice as well as using your Christmas Trees to help the environment surrounding them. The trees are collected by volunteers and given to local farmers so they can be chipped and recycled.

A handful of the local communities pay £15 for volunteers to collect their trees, then Ashgate plan routes accordingly and send truly generous people to ensure these trees get to the farm. The same farm that will chip the trees and convert them into biomass fuel.

Last week, MVIS team members Jon Larkins and Ben Ashman took the service van and collected trees in and around Matlock. Together, they collected 29 trees helping the team to raise the equivalent of over £400 in tree collections.

This is not the first time MVIS have volunteered their time to help this ingenious idea. MVIS have worked with Ashgate for over a year now and always like to find new ground-breaking ways to help the charity from taking part in the Sparkle Walk to Car-Boot Sales.

When all the trees are collected, they are converted into biomass fuel, a known way of making use of Christmas Trees after spending the festive period making your house look bright and vibrant for the big day. Using photosynthesis trees use carbon dioxide to help them grow and flourish, but when the trees die and begin to rot, they release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere as well as trace amounts of methane, a gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Biomass as a source of energy means that gas is used as energy as opposed to being lost to nature.

Ashgate Hospice have since announced that this year’s scheme has been the most successful to date and has raised a staggering £12,203.75. This money will help ensure that they can continue to provide specialist care to patients and their families across North Derbyshire. Well done to everyone who took part!