School Christmas tree - real or not?

[Puskiesauce]

Each year we purchase a real Christmas tree for our (senior) school reception area (7ft). All visitors see this on arrival.

Budgets being what they are in education, to save money it has been suggested we get an artificial one for next year.

(Edited to add it costs about £75 as we are given a discount.)

YABU - keep it real
YANBU - think of the money

This will be used in our decision making!

Keep it real. And shorter. Theres a big price difference through the height stages.

we changed to a really good fake one about 8 years ago. More than paid for its self, and still looks perfect. From an environmental pov it’s much of a muchness.

Would you be able to get a discount anywhere, a local Christmas tree farm gives our school one as a donation.

Fake - although the environmental impacts of real or fake are not that far apart, it seems really perverse to spend the whole year telling children not to cut out from the centre of the sheet, waste loo roll or leave blank space on the page "to save paper" and encouraging them to plant trees to save the planet, apart from in December when you cut a big tree down for three weeks of decor.

I would get a fake one, because it will last the school decades. Thinking long term, it doesn't make sense to keep replacing it year on year.

BestZebbie These trees are a crop grown especially for harvesting in December, it's no different from a field of barley except that the trees have had a few years of cleaning up the air before being used. It's not the worst industry, is it?