THOUSANDS of Christmas cards have been handed over by West Buckland Friendship Club to Marks & Spencer to help plant young trees in local villages later in the year.

The club handed over about 7,500 used cards collected in a community club project to the Taunton store for recycling – Marks & Spencer has been the collection point locally for this service for some years and works in close co-operation with the Woodland Trust and local communities.

Joanne Mathieson, of the Woodland Trust, said: “We want to say a huge thank you to Denis and the West Buckland Friendship Club for their efforts in collecting so many cards. As a charity we are so grateful to the many people and communities who put the effort in to recycle their cards at M&S. It makes a huge difference if people take their cards to an M&S, rather than just placing them in a kerbside bin because not only are cards recycled, trees are planted too.

“Through collecting more than 32 million cards over the last four years, the public, schools, communities and groups such as West Buckland Friendship Club along with M&S have helped us plant more than 32,000 trees. The beauty of the M&S Christmas card scheme lies in its simplicity. People simply need to collect all their cards after Christmas, which are often lying about, take them to their M&S store – there are bins in most stores – and M&S will do the rest.”