This is one of those ethical debates that I mull over every holiday season.
Is it right to cut down a tree ( yes it is a crop grown specifically for harvesting, but still. just to stuff it, decorate it and then toss it out when it is done, even though recycling is done, many do not do this.
However, real trees support local businesses. Though many Xmas tree farmers cannot sell you a Full Tree ( roots in a ball) because they need a special nursery licscense for that. ( I know, I’ve asked all the local xmas tree farmers around here.)
Or is it more harmful to buy a plastic/fake tree because of all the chemicals involved and the fact it will never be bio-degradeable when its life span is finally finished ( 10-20 years or so.) and is probably supporting China.
Discuss.
Christmas tree farms exist in the first place to grow and sell trees. They wouldn’t exist if people didn’t buy those Christmas trees, so it’s not like we’re wasting them. They were created to be “wasted” each holiday, so I’d say buying real trees would be more “ecologically friendly,” especially if you’d compare that to buying a fake tree and discarding it periodically.
Same thing for normal paper and lumber. Most of those trees are specifically created because we need paper so it’s an ongoing, renewable, logical process.
Also, most Christmas trees grow for five or six years before harvest, so they’re converting carbon dioxide to oxygen and doing all the other tree things for several years.
More to the point, if they’re just thrown out and landfilled, rather than, say, being burned, they’re going to be around in solid form for a long time, and thereby serve as a carbon sink. Yes, it seems odd that landfilling a thing might be the environmentally-friendly option, but it probably is, in this case.
Of course, a year’s worth of Christmas trees is a negligibly small carbon sink in comparison with the amount of fossil fuels the folks using those trees will burn in that same year, but it’s something.
Some places sell “living” trees, which still have their roots and you can plant them after the
holidays are over. I always found it ironic that we celebrate the birth of a deity by using and
then discarding like old trash a living organism.
The question is though, what would that land be if not a tree/lumber farm? Farming usually leads to less biological diversity than the land in its native state, although it is still preferable to that land being paved over.
Real trees always seemed a total waste to me, so one year I took branches that I had trimmed from a eucalyptis in the yard and lashed them together for a natural, re-use, no waste tree.
It looked just like a regular tree in the photos, but after a few days the den smelled like Vick’s Vaporub.
Yeah, the most eco-friendly position is the “live tree”, which comes in a big bucket and weighs a ton, what with the dirt and the large root ball and all. My wife’s boss used to get live trees every year, and one year she gave it to us after the holidays. Today, it’s planted to the side of our house, decked out for the holidays with nice outdoor lighting, and growing year by year.
Between the two of the OP, though, a real tree would win, no contest. Reason: they rot, whereas a fake tree never will, and even if you get 50 years out of your fake tree, eventually it’s gonna have to make a trip to the dumpster, and it’ll never ever decompose.
I understand that there are services that’ll run your old tree through the chipper and return the mulch to you for use in your garden or compost pile. That sounds like a winner to me.
Ahem! ‘Real’ fake trees are made from wire and feathers, with a wooden trunk. Not plastic. My parents only recently stopped using theirs after over 60 years. It will come back out when their grandchildren are older.