It has now emerged after footage was shown during a council meeting, when the animal rights group saw it and said the council was spending too much money.

Costs Far Exceed Budget
Stichtse Vecht had a 50,000 euros budget for cleaning up after Christmas, but that number came in more than 50 percent over budget. The city managed to round up 4,450 Christmas trees, making the cost 17.

44 euros per tree.

To engage residents, 25 drop-off points were established, and children were offered 1 euro to bring in each tree. Anyone who had more than 15 trees could leave them out front for pick up.



Instead of it being organised in-house, a local events agency was contracted for the job. A spokeswoman said that the event-based arrangement was expensive to run, particularly in terms of staff. "This type of collection was event-based rather than routine scheduled waste collection," the spokesperson said.



Other Municipalities Spent Far Less
Adjacent localities handled the equivalent process for a fraction of the price. By taking it on in-house, Woerden acquired 4,194 trees for only 3,900 euros — 0.93 cents per tree.

Utrecht also primarily organized the collection with its own employees, at a cost of around 40,000 euros.

Even cities that did hire outside contractors still had costs that were much lower. Utrechtse Heuvelrug got around 2,600 trees for around 9,25.