Sustainability: Mulchfest

Miller has been working with NYC Parks for several years on Mulchfest, the department’s annual sustainability drive to recycle used Christmas trees.
It is one of our favorite campaigns.

To get the word out and build awareness, a first wave of the campaign ran on social media and Google before Christmas to inform New Yorkers that they could recycle  their Christmas trees. After the holiday, the campaign message shifted and encouraged action urging celebrants to drop off their trees at one of the NYC Parks’ Mulchfest locations. The trees are then chipped into mulch and redistributed to NYC gardeners for their gardens or to make a winter bed for a street tree.

The media plan geo targeted NYC residents across all five boroughs, and engaged zip code targeting to reach both new sites or sites that did not have a lot of trees dropped off last year as well as all of the site locations.

Results: Mulchfest set a new record in 2023: 58,309 trees were collected throughout the City during this year’s event, up from 50,934 in 2022. The campaign showed extremely positive results on both Facebook and Instagram with an unprecedented click through rate on Google Search. “New Yorkers have gone above and beyond in their tree-cycling efforts this year and set a new Mulchfest record,” said NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue in a statement. “Here’s to breaking the record again at Mulchfest 2024!”

In previous years, the Parks Department has collected between 25,000 and 30,000 on average annually.