County residents recycled some of this year’s Christmas memories into a useful resource for keeping Baldwin beautiful in the coming year.

Georgia Power and Keep Milledgeville-Baldwin County Beautiful held its first annual “Bring One for the Chipper” Christmas tree recycling event Saturday behind City Hall.

Between 9 a.m. and about 12:30 p.m., before the rain put a damper on the event, Baldwin County residents drove in to Milledgeville to recycle their Christmas trees into mulch to be used for beautification projects across the community.

Georgia Power provided a truck, tree chipper and a crew to help collect people’s lovingly used Christmas trees and turn them into mulch, which will be stockpiled temporarily and used for landscaping projects.

“It’s hard to tell how much volume [of mulch] we’re going to have, but if it’s a sufficient amount we’ll use the mulch for beautification projects around the county,” Baldwin County Environmental Compliance Officer Marion Nelson said.

As this first year’s “Bring One for the Chipper” event was marred by rainy weather, Nelson was already thinking of ways to improve the effort next year.

Nelson said that next year the Keep Baldwin Beautiful group may try to designate a place where residents can drop off trees for a prescribed amount of time after Christmas for a Georgia Power crew to come out and chip all the trees on one day.

“It’s not convenient for everyone to come out and donate their tree on the same day,” Nelson said. “If we identify one central location, I think it would make it easier for people.”

But the bad weather didn’t keep Milledgeville resident Justin Jones from coming out to recycle two trees Saturday.

“It makes you feel good to know you’re doing something with your Christmas tree,” he said.

And that good feeling included a free dogwood tree seedling as a reward for doing the right thing.

Jones said he already has a place in his yard picked out for the dogwood.

And for all those dogwood, cedar and green ash seedlings that weren’t passed out Saturday, Milledgeville-Baldwin County Development Authority Director Angie Gheesling said the county will utilize them in the forthcoming Martin Luther King Day of Service, Jan. 19.