ON THE twelfth day of Christmas thousands of families pulled down their tree and decorations for another year in accordance with centuries of tradition.

But when they looked for an environmentally-friendly way of disposing their rapidly balding firs, they found Stoke-on-Trent City Council had already finished its Christmas tree recycling collections for 2009.

It seemed the council had assumed families would take down their trees early, and only held recycling collections on January 3 or 4.

But that decision left Daniel Worrall and girlfriend Nicola Brindley feeling prickly after they took their tree down on January 6 – and found they had missed the council collection.

Daniel, aged 22, from Cliff Vale, said: "Nicola said we had to take the decorations down on twelfth night.

"So on the day I went on the council's website to check where I could get the tree recycled and was amazed to find the collections had already gone.

"I thought it was very silly to hold them before most people will have taken down their trees. The council has not thought this through.

"When you plan these things, surely you have to take festivities and traditions into account and wait until they are over to start recycling.

"I think there will be a lot of people in our position, and many trees will just go on the tip and be wasted."

Nicola, also 22, added: "We're quite disappointed because we want to be environmentally-friendly.

"The council is always trying to encourage people to recycle, but this time it has got it wrong."

But hours later the council revealed it was also now holding Christmas tree recycling this Saturday and Sunday.

Officials also say trees can be taken to green waste facilities at Hanford and Burslem at any time.

A council spokesman said: "We always do our collections on the nearest weekend, and this year we have extended it for a further weekend because of the scheme's success – we recycled 300 trees last weekend.

"We don't hold collections during the week because workers are already busy dealing with extra volumes of household waste."

But Daniel said: "The new dates were not on the council's website on Tuesday morning, and I don't know where people would store their needle-shedding trees for five days until the next collection anyway.

"They will have taken them to the tip by then. The green waste facilities were not mentioned on the website."

Stafford Borough Council operates its tree recycling points between January 5 and January 12.