City officials have found as many as 600 unsold Christmas trees dumped not far from a large parking area normally used by hikers and skiers heading into the Oslo forest at Låkeberget, in the valley of Maridalen. The illegal dumping has put Christmas tree sellers in an unflattering light.
“This is extremely unfortunate and puts our entire business in a bad light,” John Anders Strande, leader of the tree sellers’ organization Norsk Juletre, told state broadcaster NRK on Friday.
The dumped trees were discovered by officials from the city agency in charge of environmental issues and recreation. “We think the trees were dumped in the evening, when there are few people here, by folks who expect others will clean up after them,” Roar Grønvold of the city’s Oslo Bymiljøetaten told NRK.
He and other colleagues spent the day picking up and chopping up the trees, for disposal at compost and recycling stations, where they can be used for biofuel production. Strande said he’d never heard of such illegal dumping before,and stressed that tree sellers can instead transport unsold trees to the recycling stations themselves, where they can be dumped legally at no charge.
“It looks like someone wasn’t familiar with routines and regulations,” he said, and blamed the dumping on rogue sellers.
newsinenglish.no staff
