A POOLE-based hospice has benefitted from donations amounting to £1,600 through their Christmas tree collection service.

A forest of former Christmas trees was reduced to re-useable green waste after being collected by staff from local charity hospice, Lewis-Manning Care.

The arboreal leftovers were taken to Eco Sustainable Solutions in Parley, the UK’s leading purpose-built site for organics recycling and renewable energy, which processed them without charge.

Vanessa Howden-Smith, who collected the trees with her partner Steve Pudwell from KMA Shot Blasting, said: “It was the second year Lewis-Manning Hospice has offered this service and there was massive interest.

“We were able to go and pick up people’s trees in exchange for a donation and we’re very grateful to Eco Sustainable Solutions for processing them all.

“Next year we are hoping to make the service much bigger and raise even more money.”

In total, 1.86 tonnes of Christmas trees were processed at the plant.

Lewis-Manning Hospice Care is a long-standing organisation that provides extraordinary hospice care for patients with life-limiting illnesses, and their families, in Poole, Purbeck and East Dorset.

The company annually processes 250,000 tonnes of material at its Parley site, and end products include enriched topsoil, compost and woodchip.

The business currently handles 340,000 tonnes of organic material each year across four facilities, including its highly successful anaerobic digestion (AD) plant at Piddlehinton near Dorchester.

Bryony-mai Hammond from Eco said: “It was an absolute pleasure to help the charity dispose of the trees.

“And the good thing is that they were all reduced to compost that will be used to grow more plants.”