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Should I Buy a Fake Fir?Or is it better for the environment to cut down a real Christmas tree?

By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007, at 7:34 AM ET
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty. Click image to expand.

Please help settle an argument that's threatening to tear my family apart this holiday season: What's worse for the environment, a real Christmas tree that lasts just a few weeks, or an artificial one that we can haul out every December for the next 15 years?

Crunching the numbers on this quandary is tough, if only because so much of the public information is skewed in favor of natural trees. America's Christmas tree growers have a fearsome lobby, one that's spent the past few years demonizing the artificial competition; check out this hilariously alarmist FAQ by the National Christmas Tree Association, which lambastes fake firs and pines as beetle-infested fire hazards descended from toilet brushes. (According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the NCTA started going on the attack in 2004 in response to declining sales.)

Despite its hyperbolic rhetoric, the real-trees industry makes at least one excellent point when denigrating the fakes: The needles on artificial trees are usually made from polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, which is anathema to Greenpeacers and their ilk. As the Lantern discussed two weeks back, PVC is widely reviled as a major source of dioxins. To make matters worse, cheap PVC is sometimes stabilized with lead, which can break free as harmful dust as a fake tree ages.

Growing concern over PVC has led fake-tree manufacturers to develop polyethylene needles; according to one prominent treemaker, 20 percent of artificial Christmas trees are now PE rather than PVC. But watch out for sleight of hand when it comes to "eco-friendly" fake trees; most of those 20 percent still contain PVC interior needles in order to create a fuller look.

As you note, the chief environmental selling point with fake trees is the fact they can be reused, which means that energy doesn't have to be expended year after year getting the product to market. But how much transportation fuel does an artificial tree really save? Let's make an estimate based on shipping each type of tree to a decidedly average American burg: Lebanon, Kan., claimant to the title of Geographic Center of the Lower 48.

The vast majority—at least 85 percent—of fake trees come from Asia, so we'll base our estimate on a Shanghai-to-Long-Beach, Calif., voyage aboard a container ship. A large ship capable of holding 2,125 40-foot containers will consume about 1,000 metric tons of fuel during its two-week journey across the Pacific Ocean. Let's say that there's only one container of fake trees on that ship, which means the trees' share of that fuel is roughly 1,037 pounds. On the last stretch of the journey, from Long Beach to Lebanon, the Yuletide cargo travels on a truck that gets six miles per gallon. On that 1,160-mile road trip, the truck will consume about 193 gallons of gas, which weighs around 1,158 pounds. Total for the trip from Shanghai to north-central Kansas: 2,195 pounds of fuel.

Now let's compare that fuel usage to 15 years' worth of real trees. (The Lantern is actually skeptical that most artificial trees last that long—especially the cheapest ones—but let's go with it.) In order to consume 2,195 pounds of fuel, your real trees would have to average a farm-to-retailer journey of 146.3 miles, assuming they are transported on the same six-mpg trucks mentioned above.* And even though the NCTA likes to point out that tree farms operate in all 50 states—yes, even in Florida—odds are the trees at your local lot traveled farther than that.

Yet the Lantern is still going to cast his vote for real trees: PVCs are just too worrisome, and so is the disposal issue. It's easy to track down a local program that will turn your real tree into mulch, but even the hardiest plastic tree is doomed to wind up in a landfill, where it will remain intact for ages. As for the fakes' advantage in terms of transportation energy, you can minimize this by being an informed consumer and trying to buy as locally as possible. (Also, don't worry about deforestation—98 percent of American trees are farm-raised, and they are usually replaced on a 3-to-1 basis after each harvest.)

The Lantern realizes, though, that raising Christmas trees may not be the most efficient use of land, and that pesticides are an integral part of the farming process. You may also blanch at the idea of killing a living thing solely so you and yours can enjoy a few weeks of pine-scented joy. In that case, lessen your guilt by buying a tree that you plan on planting after the holidays, complete with roots; just make sure you don't keep it indoors for more than a week, or it might become so acclimated to your living room that it won't survive outdoors.

There are also a few cities, like San Francisco, that offer rent-a-tree programs; they'll bring you a potted tree, then take it back after the holidays and plant it somewhere that needs a dash of green. A smart idea, but traditionalists beware: The trees on offer don't look like the ones you grew up with, but are rather very young Southern magnolias and small-leaf tristanias. They certainly don't appear capable of supporting that massive Three Wise Men ornament you inherited from Grandma.

Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to , and check this space every Tuesday.

Correction, Dec. 18, 2007: This piece originally stated that real trees would have to average a farm-to retailer journey of 4.1 miles in order to consume 2,195 pounds of fuel. That distance is actually 146.3 miles. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

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Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for Gizmodo. His first book, Now the Hell Will Start, is out now.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
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Remarks from the Fray:

One more reason to go with a live tree, other than the fact that it makes the house smell like Christmas, is carbon fixing. If you live in a community like mine in So. Cal. where the local waste management turns your real tree into mulch at the end of the holiday you are removing green house gasses from the environment and putting the carbon into the ground.

The trees convert CO2 into wood thus removing it from the atmosphere. Since these trees are farmed and therefore planted for maximum growth, not crowded, provided optimal growing conditions, ect. One would expect plantation-raised trees to remove greenhouse gasses faster than natural forest grown trees.

And they make my house smell like Christmas.

--morganb

(To reply, click here.)

Fraysters, go back to the link referenced in the article as the hilariously fake FAQ. Check out the comparision "Before" "During" and "After" photos of the fake tree fire and the real tree fire.

Ok.... notice that the Christmas presents are saved in both fires. It's a Christmas miracle, people!

Moral of the story: If you want to fireproof your house, make Christmas wrapping paper both a wallpaper and an exterior siding.

Ho! Ho! Ho!!!

--Cranky1000

(To reply, click here.)

Okay, this is near pointless argument. The difference is negligible. What difference would it make if everyone used fake or real trees to the environment? Nothing.

I consider myself an environmentalist and yet I drive a gas guzzling SUV - because here is a radical idea: Your personal choices will make no difference to the environment. Why? Because the problems are too big - you've got the industrialization of China, India and other parts of the world. Greenhouse gases are rising too fast for liberal Americans to have any impact no matter how "green" they try to be.

I think the whole "conserve" movement is a waste of time and worse - because it takes our eyes off the real issues: finding alternative sources of energy, setting up effective regulatory systems, etc. It just makes you feel good - but you're not helping.

--mcusa

(To reply, click here.)

The issue is further weighted in favor of live trees when you consider that plastic trees need to be kept somewhere in your McMansion for the other 48 weeks of the year. Storing a plastic tree involves creating indoor square footage that could have remained as lawn or woods, and which will require heating all winter and a/c all summer.

Compare that to the natural tree, which sits outside breathing in CO2 for its entire life, with its roots in the soil fixing nutrients and rain water, and its transpiration helping generate rain clouds. Yes, the natural tree will eventually release its CO2 as it decomposes, but much of that will remain in the soil system rather than escaping into the atmosphere, in the process that leads over millions of years to the creation of fossil fuels (eg, carbon sequestered by dead things) in the first place.

Your best bet is to plant a tree in a big pot and wheel it inside every Xmas, and then plant it permanently outside when it is getting too big to move. A suburban family could get many years out of each tree, and end up with a lovely backyard display of a lifetime's holiday memories.

If keeping a live tree is not feasible (eg, for apartment dwellers or in a trailer park), the obvious green solution is to buy a tree from the closest farm you can locate. A small amount of attention to buying local will make a big difference in fuel usage, especially for something as heavy as a tree.

--malangali

(To reply, click here.)

(12/20)

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