Friday JohnKu – AKA – TGIF – Fri-Yay/Good News

~ John W. Howell

Today’s good news story comes from AS USA Online Sports Newspaper and was sent in by special reporter.

Thousands of Christmas trees have been dropped from helicopters in the US since 1990. 36 years later, the coastal restoration effort is a success

What started as an unusual recycling experiment has become a key part of Louisiana’s fight to save its coastline.

By Lucía Martín Payo and Roddy Constwitter
Update:

Every January, thousands of Christmas trees end up in the trash after the holiday season. In New Orleans, officials have found a remarkable way to give them a second life.

Instead of sending the trees to landfills, the discarded firs are collected, tied together into large bundles and dropped by helicopters over coastal marshes. The goal is to help slow the decades-long loss of land threatening Louisiana’s coastline.

A state losing ground to the water

Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles of coastline since the 1930s due to natural erosion and powerful storms. Rising sea levels and sinking land have made the problem even worse.

The Mississippi River also no longer carries as much sediment into the wetlands as it once did, reducing the natural process that helped rebuild the coast. As a result, marshes are disappearing rapidly, weakening their ability to absorb storm surges and protect nearby communities from flooding.

The Christmas tree recycling program is designed to help restore some of those damaged wetlands by creating natural barriers that trap sediment and encourage new land growth.

A creative solution backed by research

Scientists have found that these tree barriers can make a measurable difference. Studies show that the structures can reduce water flow by half and increase the thickness of the soil each year.

Experts caution that the initiative alone cannot solve Louisiana’s massive erosion problem, but official figures show the program has already helped restore an area of wetlands equivalent to around 200 soccer fields.

By turning old Christmas trees into tools for coastal restoration, New Orleans has transformed holiday waste into a small but meaningful weapon in the fight against climate change and rising seas.

The good news in this story is that cast-off holiday trees that could become waste are turned into useful environmental tools. Today’s JohnKu talks about waste. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Treasure by John W. Howell © 2026

What most see as waste,

Louisiana sees as . . .

Treasure for the Earth.

69 thoughts on “Friday JohnKu – AKA – TGIF – Fri-Yay/Good News”

  4. Wow. I’m not sure what to say. An interesting idea and I hope it works. But think of how this whole concept started. My guess it included a lot of beer and whiskey. I can almost see 5 or 6 guys in a bar at 1:00 am. “hey bubba, I got an idea, what if we ….” The rest is history. Bartender, another round . 😀

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  11. That’s a good idea to preserve the coast, John. There are spots on upper Lake Michigan that they dump tons of rocks on the outer beach, sometimes make wave breakers of rocks out in the lake. We see this every summer when we go for a vacation up there by Good Hart.

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  15. I’m such a fan of this great reuse of natural resources for the betterment of the area. I know the draining of wetlands has made recovery from hurricanes more problematic so this seems like a positive step to restoring the sea levels. Bravo, John.

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  18. I think I may have heard about this some years ago. It’s a clever idea that I’m happy to hear is working. Driving round the neighborhood after christmas, seeing the carcasses of dead trees lining the streets is depressing. Especially when you know they’re likely going to end up down at the landfill. Thanks for sharing this with us, John!

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  26. Really, it’s all about recycling, isn’t it?

    Take it from nature, use it and put it back. It might go back in a different mode, but it goes back.

    There’s an old saying that goes with the JohnKu… One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

    Nature’s trash is nature’s treasure.

    OX 🐂 OX

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