Bradford's nine civic Christmas trees have been recycled to help keep the city ever green.

Council workers this week took down the trees from Centenary Square and district parks to turn them into chippings to fuel City Hall's new wood-burning boiler.

The biomass boiler will replace the old gas boiler by the end of the month as part of the Council's pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2010-11.

The measures will also save money in the long term.

Barrie Tinker, the Council's principal parks and landscapes manager, said he hoped recycling the civic trees would encourage people to follow the Council's green example well into 2008 and beyond.

He said: "We hope by doing this we're sending out a positive recycling message and that people will take notice and do more to reduce their own carbon footprint.

"We'll be using chippings from timber from all our estates and woodlands to power the new City hall boilers."

For the first time this year, Bradford Council also co-ordinated kerbside collections of household Christmas trees from houses already on green waste routes.

Some streets were better than others at leaving out their trees, said Edith Grooby, one of the Council's recycling officers.

"It's still early on in the rounds so it's hard to tell what response we've had but it's still worth doing. We're moving on to the Ilkley and Addingham areas now and we're expecting to do well out there," she said.

The trees picked up are destined to be turned into compost.

Environmental bosses at Bradford Council put out a pre-festive appeal for people to go green and make extra efforts to recycling their waste, keeping their eight household waste recycling centres open every day except New Year's Day.

People across the district throw away about 40,000 extra tonnes of rubbish at Christmas - 30 per cent more than usual.

To find out more about the Council's recycling collections, ring (01274) 431000.