As mentioned early this morning, Lismore City Council has unveiled its 2025 Community Christmas Tree, marking ten years since staff first began building large-scale trees in the CBD. Interestingly, upcycled is the term used in 2025, where it has been recycled in the previous 9 years.

The tree went up this morning on the corner of Keen and Magellan streets, much to the delight of locals who now make a sport of viewing, judging, critiquing and enjoying the design each year. Lismore Council

This year’s tree features more than 150 upcycled kerbside bin lids, mostly yellow, wrapped in fairy lights and decorated with recycled toys from the Revolve Shop, as a bright reminder to the community to keep recycling and to signal that the city is open for business.

Since 2015, Council staff have turned everything from old bikes and tyres to road signs, umbrellas, potted plants, recycled drums and hundreds of PET bottles into Christmas trees in their own time, each one built from materials recovered through local waste and recycling services. 

Lismore City Council General Manager Eber Butron said the project has been a rare mix of creativity, engineering and civic pride. 

“This tree began as a simple idea, staff volunteering to give something back to the community, and it has grown into a decade-long showcase of what a circular economy looks like when you take it seriously,” he said. 

“Thank you to the 2025 team of staff who, in their own time, put this together and join other staff members over the years who have welded, painted, wired or dragged materials out of the recycling stream to make Christmas in Lismore unique.”

Council’s Infrastructure Project Manager Martin Soutar, who led this year’s team, said this year’s multi-coloured bin lid design is a deliberate full circle moment. 

(The 2025 Christmas tree features soft toys and Santa on each side)

“We wanted the tenth tree to be a fun yet blunt reminder that what goes in your kerbside recycling bin matters,” he said. 

“We need to limit what goes into the red bin and maximise what we recycle into the green and yellow bins”

“We hope the community enjoys the design, has a fantastic festive season and makes sure Christmas and holiday season packaging ends up in the right bin.”

Around the rest of the CBD over the coming days, Council will install more traditional decorations, including the much-loved Santa holding up the iconic bent pine Christmas tree, with decorations hanging from trees, wrapped around bollards and scattered through key streets and centres to bring Lismore to life with Christmas cheer.

Also adding to the Christmas cheer, Council is rolling out a Christmas in Lismore program that includes Carols in the Heart this Saturday (6 December) featuring Lismore’s own Rachael Beck with Rhydian and the Residuals, Bunny Racket, Hillbilly Skank, Isabella A Capella, Luke Vasella and a visit from Santa, Santa’s Wonderland at Lismore Regional Gallery from 5 to 21 December, an Elf Hunt in CBD shop windows throughout December and Pawtraits at the Lismore Quad on 6, 13 and 20 December. 

For more information on Christmas festivities in Lismore, visit www.xmasinlismore.com.