Christmas Trees – the Ethical Debate
The choice between real and not real is especially painful for some environmentalists. Either they desecrate the earth and chop down a tree, or buy a fake one that's full of landfill-clogging polyvinyl chloride. Salting a tree with pesticides, then chopping it down for a mere two weeks of display time isn't a great option according to environmentalists, but nor is the cost of producing a plastic tree that will end up in landfill.
In the USA they are finding some interesting answers, San Francisco's Department of the Environment began a programme of delivering a live, seven to nine foot potted tree to citizen’s home for them to decorate. After Christmas, the city retrieves the tree and plants it in one of San Francisco's tree-starved neighbourhoods. To be clear about their environmental credentials, the city isn't offering pines. Officials said pines don't make the best street trees. Instead, they suggested hanging tinsel on a primrose, a Brisbane box tree or a fruitless olive tree. The program proved so popular last year that it sold out its stock of three hundred trees in four days.
Several years ago, America's tree growers started noticing that artificial trees were steadily gaining market share and began an aggressive campaign to fight back. Tree farmers talk about how buying a real tree protects U.S. jobs. China - the leading exporter of fake trees - shipped $69 million worth of artificial pines to the United States last year.
Farmers also say buying a Christmas tree is about protecting the environment - the National Christmas Tree Association takes it a step further, boasting that an acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen for eighteen people.
The artificial-tree industry has taken notice and disputes the farmers' contention that fake trees generally end up in landfills after six to ten years of use. It claims many trees are passed down from one generation to another and says that anyway, we should think of all the pesticides and fertilizers that are used to keep a real tree going.
Ethical tree planting photograph author’s own.
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