The holiday's Christmas trees are just small part of a big increase in waste at area landfills.

Whether it is aluminum pie pans, fruit cakes or ravaged gift wrapping and packing peanuts, the household trash tends to accumulate over the holidays.

"There was a definite increase in trash brought into the landfill," said Steve Garcia, Logan landfill manager. "There was a definite increase when compared to previous weekends in the month."

Garcia said there was an increase of one ton of waste that was brought into the landfill during the weekends after Christmas and New Year's. The Village of Logan does not have a village operated trash service, so many Logan area residents take their trash to the landfill.

"The volume of traffic coming into the landfill was substantially higher over the holiday weekends," Garcia said.

The city of Clovis also saw an increase. When compared to previous Fridays in December, the City of Clovis Landfill saw a 40 percent increase in city trash tonnage that was picked up on Jan. 2, said Joel Garcia, Clovis Landfill superintendent.

The city trash crews worked only half a day on Jan. 2 but brought in 131.95 tons of trash, Joel Garcia said.

On two previous Fridays, Dec. 5 and 12, the trash collected by the city crews averaged at 80 tons, Joel Garcia said.

"It seemed like there was an increase in trash after New Year's but that could be largely, in part,  to the crews not working on the holiday," Joel Garcia said.

On  Dec. 26 there were 26.86 tons brought in by city crews, the crews only worked a half day but they brought in less then what was collected on Jan. 2, Joel Garcia said.

The city of Tucumcari also saw a an increase in the amount of trash brought in after the holiday, said Alex Madrid, Tucumcari landfill manager.

Madrid said that there was nearly a 100 percent increase of trash tonnage collected on Dec. 26 compared  to collections on Dec. 22.

"On Dec. 22 there was 34.14 tons collected and on Dec. 26 there was 64.51 tons collected," Madrid said.  "The trash tonnage collected on Jan. 2 was 24.23 tons, which is around the average trash collected on a Friday."

But nothing can compare to the trash pileup during and after the the snow storm on  2006-2007 holiday, when 7,000 travelers were stranded in Tucumcari, Madrid said. "I think there was not much of an increase because we did not have bad weather around the holidays like we have had in the past. Travelers were able to continue on their way and were not stuck in hotels due to the bad weather and closed roads."