Christmas is over and instead of having a beautiful green tradition adorned with lights in the living room, most families now have a tree with droopy brown needles that’s seen better days.

No need to scratch your head, local officials are already picking up the tired trees and many will be recycled to create artificial reefs for lakes and ponds in the area.

Troy Public Works Director Vaughn Daniels said residents may place trees curbside on their regular trash pick-up day for the next few weeks.

“Any time they get ready to dispose of it, we’ll be happy to pick it up,” Daniels said.

For now, the city is stockpiling the old trees at the public works building and anyone who’d like to pick them up for use in projects such as artificial reefs can snag as many as they’d like. The trees will be available for about a month, Daniels said.

“Some people like to keep up their trees until after the new year,” said Linda Faust with the City of Brundidge. “So we’ll be picking up for a few weeks.”

Faust said residents can leave their trees out by the road on any day and city workers will make regular routes around the area to collect the discarded trees. The city plans to recycle them in whatever fashion they can, including placing the trees in the city pond.

But Christmas trees aren’t the only holiday waste families are dealing with this week. A plethora of boxes and bows littered floors on Christmas morning in Pike County. Some of that can be recycled as well.

Daniels said paper and styrofoam must go in a resident’s regular trash, but cardboard boxes can recycled.

“If they break those boxes down and put them beside their garbage can, or under a blue recycle bag, we’ll grab them,” Daniels said.