To Tree Or Not To Fake Tree

A coworker asked me a question today for which I had no sound answer: "Which is a better choice for the environment--a fake Christmas tree or a real one?" I stumbled around and gave him some weak jive along the lines of "the fake tree is better in the long run because it only gets shipped to your home once, thus giving it a smaller long-term carbon footprint." As soon as I said it, I realized I was talking out of my rear end. Like so many other things, I knew flat squat about the environmental merits of Christmas trees. To the Internet Machine!

Did you know that there's a National Christmas Tree Association? Well there is, and wonder of wonders, they feel rather strongly that natural trees are the best thing to buy. They even have a totally non-biased chart illustrating the evils of fake trees. There's even an FAQ, complete with graphic pictures of a towering inferno created by an evil fake tree. Oh the humanity! Please avert your eyes if you can't stand the sight of singed presents.

Ah well, that's settled. If the lobbyists have weighed in, well it just HAS to be true.

So what do the enviro-nerds have to say? Surprisingly, there seems to be a pretty clear consensus: all things being equal, a real Christmas tree is actually the lesser of two evils, especially if you live near organically grown trees that you can chop down yourself. While it's true that chucking a tree every year does take up landfill space, at least they biodegrade at some point. And no matter how far your real tree is shipped, and how much carbon havoc that wreaks, you just can't get around the fact that most fake trees come all the way from China and are made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is simply terrible stuff. PVC off-gasses toxic additives into your home, can't be recycled and produces highly carcinogenic dioxins during its production. I don't care where my tree comes from, I don't want extra PVC in my house if I can help it.

I'm not going to regurgitate the entire pro and con of the tree debate, but I'm giving you the gist. Score one for the lobbyists. You win... this round.

Of course, the hardcore green thing to do would be to avoid getting a tree altogether. Not in my home. As in years past, we'll purchase a small Charlie Brown-style tree and decorate it with a single string of energy-sipping LED lights and as many bulbs as the little guy will support.

Happy holidays everyone! If you're getting a monster tree, have fun getting the sucker to stand up straight!

Grist's take