Saturday, December 5, 2009

Trash to Christmas Trees

While traveling for the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation's Trees for Troops program today in Denver area, I "stumbled upon" a really neat local environmental program linked with farm-grown Christmas trees.

It shows the power of locate creativity. The program -- created and hosted by the Inverness Hotel of Englewood -- is called Trash to Trees. Here's the link about the program. http://www.invernesshotel.com/trash_to_trees/?esitecname=trash+to+trees
I visited with Peggy Scaggs, the hotel's convention manager, and the Trash to Trees program coordinator for 2009. This is second year for Trash to Trees. This year, more than 375 students from 32 schools came to the hotel to decorate farm grown Christmas trees.

The criteria: the decorations had to be made with recycled or sustainable products. What creativity! Ornaments made from recycled soda cans, recycled CDs, recycled grocery bags and more. One tree was made especially to meet needs of wild birds and will be donated to the Audubon Society.

Thanks to the Inverness Hotel for a wonderful program; to Tagawa Gardens for presenting the trees for the schools to use and to the other sponsors.