Real trees are the bee's knees

I always thought using fake Christmas trees was better for the environment than cutting down real ones. It just seemed wrong to erect a dead tree inside my house, pour water in the metal stand at its base to slow the process of needle-shedding all over my carpet, stack a bunch of gifts underneath it where they’ll stay for mere hours, then drag it out to the curb on the first or second day of the New Year to be picked up by the city along with the 20 or 30 others that I could see lining the street.

Turns out I was wrong. Again.

An article in Organic Gardening points out that artificial trees are made from materials like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and metal. And PVC is not good. The Children’s Health Environmental Coalition warns that “the manufacture of PVC creates and disperses dioxins, which include the most toxic man-made chemical known. Released into air or water, dioxins enter the food chain, where they accumulate in fatty tissues of animals and humans, a potential risk for causing cancer, damaging immune functions and impairing children's development.”

Eighty-five percent of the fake Christmas trees used in the U.S. are imported from China (where one can assume conditions at the factories are less than ideal). Because they can’t be recycled, they end up in landfills after we’re finished with them – and they only last an average of six to ten years before we dump ‘em for a newer model.

And get this: the longer we have fake trees in our house, the more likely they are to become toxic, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But real trees can be mulched, composted, chipped or fed to birds and animals. Discarded real trees can even be used as erosion barriers or sunk in ponds for fish habitat. And Organic Gardening makes the case that “Christmas tree farmers are leaders in conservation agriculture. Their product emits healthy oxygen during its 15 or so years of growing, requires little to no supplemental irrigation, and thrives in tough terrain that is otherwise unsuited for agricultural crops.”

New trees are planted every year, while metals and the petroleum used to make plastic are nonrenewable resources.

The shedding needles thing is a minor inconvenience when you think about the overall benefits of choosing real trees under which to pile all the wrapped merchandise that we probably don’t need and in my case can’t really afford.

I should have known, actually, since I almost always prefer “real” to “fake.”


To view a real vs. fake tree comparison table created by the National Christmas Tree Association, click here. To learn how communities are recycling and reusing real Christmas trees, click here.


Sources: Organic Gardening, National Christmas Tree Association, Children’s Health Environmental Coalition, U.S. EPA.