Norwegian wood or fake plastic trees?

By Nic Price on 10 December 2006 — 1 min read

A good excuse for a musical reference, but this isn’t to do with choosing between the Beatles and Radiohead.

I was just wondering what kind of Christmas tree we should be buying this year.

With all the recent mention of carbon footprints, are we doing more for the environment buying the traditional Norwegian Spruce or is it time to opt for the articial variety?

We’ve already made the decision. This year we’ve gone for a 6’6” Killington from Homebase. It’s got real pine cones on it and it’s not bad for an imitation.

I guess we can find other ways to reproduce the smell of pine. And at least the “non-drop” bit is true at last.

What I will miss is the annual outing to buy the tree. From now on it’s the annual putting-together of the tree, quite an ingenious contraption it is too.

I’m putting my green money on the fake paying for itself over the years both financially and environmentally.

I’ll dig around to find out the true cost of norwegian wood versus fake plastic trees and will report back with any findings.

It would also be interesting to know what all our evergreen politicians are going for.

Leave a comment

Leave a Reply to Jo Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Does the real xmas tree market really do that much harm to the environment? Might even do some good – all those trees replanted every year…

  • Yes, I’m sure sustainable forestry does a lot to help.

    It would be interesting to know what the total costs is per tree, with the energy used to chop it down and transport it etc.

  • I think you are giving the real tree a hard time. You dont mention the manufacturing cost of fake tree. That is the consumption of resources , pollution and transport cost. How many boat trips to Norway for one trip to China ? There is also the human cost (if could have been made in some sort of sweat shop)!

    I suspect the answer is that we should be growing our own trees in our back gardens…

    Peeko.

  • Real trees suck up lot’s of resources too – and lot’s of nasty chemicals. The difference is that real trees are used for 3 weeks – then they go to the landfill. Fake Trees are often used for decades

%d bloggers like this: