4 months Ago
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 9,250 euros, while De Bilt coughed up around 7,500 euros for its outsourced efforts.
Concerns for the Coming Winter
City council members fear a similar expensive process will be repeated this winter. "Otherwise, we'll end up with a huge bill from an events bureau again next year," warned CDA faction leader Sarah van Lindenberg-Hess.
The municipality said it understood the concerns, but added that only a restricted number of changes can be made ahead of the next collection. Organizing such a one-day effort is difficult because there are not enough municipal staff or volunteers to participate, and the logistics for the collection also demand more truck drivers, the spokeswoman said.
Officials are looking at ways to reduce costs — like having more in-house staff — but they said it would be necessary to hire an events bureau this year to organize the tree collection.
