So which Christmas trees are greenest?
Is a real Christmas tree better for the environment than a fake one? It depends on your plans for the future.
Deciding whether to go with the real thing or an artificial version involves lots of factors. Some people think it’s not really Christmas unless their living room has that “real tree” smell. Others would rather have Santa trap them in the chimney than spend the season sweeping up pine needles and crawling under the tree to refill the water. In other words, environmental considerations are probably low on most people’s lists.
But it’s something that Christmas tree growers and manufacturers think about. The American Christmas Tree Association commissioned a study of the lifetime environmental impact of both real and artificial trees (calling them “fake trees” is something of a faux pas in the Christmas tree industry.)
In both cases, there are costs, according to the 2010 report. To grow real trees, you need dirt, water, pesticide, herbicide and fungicide. Then you need gasoline to harvest and transport them, as well as the labour to do all of that. (Some tree farms also spray the trees with colourant to maintain the vibrant greenery.)
There’s a common misconception about where real trees come from. Lynn Wunderlich, who works with Christmas tree farmers in her role as farm adviser for the University of California Co-operative Extension, said many people assume the trees are cut down in forests and stolen from nature. In reality, Christmas trees are grown on farms in U.S. states and Canada, and they are meant to be cut down.
Christmas trees are a bit less water-intensive than fruit trees, Wunderlich said. Also, while the tree is growing, it’s removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into oxygen.
To manufacture an artificial Christmas tree, you need PVC plastic, steel and aluminum, plus cardboard for the packaging and the resources to ship the trees from Asia, where most are made. The amount of raw materials needed to manufacture an artificial Christmas tree is about equal to the amount needed to make an upholstered patio chair.
What happens to the tree after Christmas is another factor to consider. Some areas let residents compost real trees. Others incinerate them or send them to a landfill. Each option has its benefits and drawbacks. Artificial trees can be donated to places such as nursing homes, but their ultimate destination is a landfill — they can’t be recycled.
On a one-to-one basis, a real tree requires fewer resources to create and get to the customer than an artificial tree, said William Paddock, managing director of WAP Sustainability Consulting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who oversaw the study. But if you plan to reuse your artificial tree, which most people do, the environmental impact eventually tips in favour of the artificial tree.
“Over the course of time, there is a break-even point,” Paddock said.
The most conservative estimates suggest it takes nine years of use for an artificial tree to be a better choice than buying a real tree every year, but Paddock said six years is probably a more reasonable guess.