During the holiday season, it can be a real challenge to be environmentally conscious. With the emphasis on commercialism, after Christmas is often a trash nightmare, with discarded wrapping paper, all those bows, and the cardboard boxes sitting by the side of the road. But the saddest reminder that the holidays are over is the Christmas trees thrown to the curb.
One of the great environmental decisions is “Artificial or Real”. A study released in 2009 by the Christmas Tree Association decided artificial trees are more environmentally friendly, provided they are kept ten years. However buying a real tree will not single-handedly destroy the planet ore void any carbon offsets.
Christmas trees began as a seed, planted in small plastic pots of peat moss in a nursery. After two years they are transferred to a field. Throughout their growing seasons, they will be fertilized, sprayed for bugs, watered regularly, and pruned to keep their traditional “Christmas tree” shape. While growing, they create oxygen, store carbon, filter water and hold in the soil. Beginning around their 7th year, they are harvested by chain saw, bagged and loaded into trailers for their trip to the market. Trees deemed unworthy are left in the field. The fields must then be prepared for the next crop, the stumps are removed and the soil is prepared for the new seedlings.
Christmas trees are an agricultural product grown for their aesthetics only. With sales declining on a yearly basis, the industry wants to improve to reverse that trend. They were hoping for a public campaign similar to the one for the dairy industry’s “Got milk?”, the pork industry’s “Pork, the other white meat”, and “Cotton, the fabric of your life”. This would require a fifteen cent tax on every Christmas tree sold. This tax was labeled anti-Christmas, a “Grinch of a tax”, a tax on Christmas, and soon shelved.
The decision over “real vs. artificial” is a personal, emotional and often financial issue. Christmas is not the time to judge others by their choice.
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