A tree shelter recycling scheme is nearing a major milestone, with 2025 numbers rising sharply year on year.
Manufacturer Tubex launched its Tree Shelter Collection and Recycling Programme – claimed to be a sector first – in 2022. Last year saw a 39% rise in shelters returned and recycled over the previous year, with numbers nearing two million.
At the end of 2025, 1,982 dumpy sacks of collected tree guards had been returned to Tubex, up from 1,421 in 2024.
Once collected, the shelters are sorted, washed and reprocessed into raw material, at 95.6% yield – the quantity of collected material available for manufacturing new product.
For Pete Stevens, Tubex business development manager, the 2025 figures reinforce the long-term success of the programme and its national hub network.
Collective endeavour
“Last year, we announced that since the start of the collection and recycling programme in 2022, we had recycled more than one million tree shelters. With these figures, we are now approaching the two million milestone – a testament to the collective endeavour of the forestry sector to collect used shelters at end of life.”
Polypropylene (PP) shelters containing recycled material that are recycled at end of use are still the lowest environmental impact option (Independent LCA study here: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10130156/) and represent circular use – “a key pillar of sustainability”.
With a growing network of 24 recycling hubs nationwide, Tubex has worked with its distributors and forestry bodies to create convenient free drop-off points for legacy tree shelters.
Hub partners include Yorkshire Dales Millenium Trust, Forest Working Plastics Group, Tilhill, Maydencroft, British Hardwood Tree Nursery, Ashlea Landscaping and Green-tech among others.