Artificial Christmas Trees

[crystaltips]

Would you buy one ?
Do you have one ?
If so - What one would you reccommend ?

I feel that I should go greener and forgo the "real thing" ...

I think that a Christmas Tree should be for life and not just for Christmas

You and me both! Not only do I not have a green thumb, I have a black thumb! I have killed so many houseplants that dd commented on our pet fish, 'When the fish die, Mummy, and we get a puppy' ! I'm not seen as good with living things (except the kids, natch!)

Artificial. DP has some vague veggie anti-tree principal that I've never bothered exploring, because I have very strong anti-hoovering/lugging home heavy trees/not getting to the tip til April while it rots in the garden principals.

My only condition, like Suedomin, was that if it's fake, it must be really fake. So we have a white and silver fibre optic tree with silver baubles. It is the ultimate in kitsch and we love it. Can't wait for ds to see it - he'll think all his christmasses have come at once (which in a way they have!)

Hmb, not arguing honest. But in that case, surely trees don't benefit our environment at all as they all eventually die and rot? But they do, don't they? By your reckoning doesn't that mean that if all the trees (& plants) vanished tomorrow our environment would stay the same from the CO2 standpoint?
Also the Xmas tree compost is used to grow plants whch also absorb C02...

No, because we continue to produce CO2 from burning fossil fuels, and when we respire!

Brief outline of the carbon Cycle follows....those not interested, pleeeeze skip this.

carbon goes into the atmosphere when we respire,

Glucose + Oxygen ---> CO2 + h20

All living things respire, even plants.

CO2 also goes into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels, wood etc

CO2 also goes into the atmosphere when things rot, it is the same process as burning, just a lot slower.

there is only one thing that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere....green plants. All green plants do it, not just trees, but trees are super good at doing it, because they grow to be so big, in a limited area of ground. This plants do by photosynthesis.

CO2 + H2O -> Glucose + oxygen (the same equation as repiration but backwards)

And a jolly good thing for us that they do, or we would die from lack of oxygen and food.

You are right, eventually all things will die, and return their co2 'load' to the air, but these trees (if left to nature) would live a long time, and get very big, they would then rot very slowly, so the effect on the co2 level would be ' little and often'.

My point wasn't so much that trees were, of themselves bad, but that by growing them, and cutting them when small, you are doing very little to help the CO2 level, infact, nothing at all in the long term. What we have to do is grow lots more trees, and keep them alive for longer. Then when they are big, cut them down and use the wood for contruction. That way the co2 stays 'locked up'. And trees are a re-newable resource. We also need to burn less of everything, and reduce the co2 going into the atmosphere.

As I said, blame it on the KS4 curriculum! I'm not that green a person, but this is a very good topic to get kids thinking! And me for that matter.

After years of real trees and hating artificial we now have a really lovley fake tree, incredibly real looking in my opinion.
I've always bought real ones but then would spend the following year finding the needles everywhere - ours weren't treated and so just died really quickly!
Since Lottie turned 1 we've had and will continue to have a fake tree for a while yet as I don't want her eating the needles from the floor. It's bad enough with her attempting to eat cat food / gravel from outside / grass and mud in the garden during summer! Pine needles ar one thing i can do without in my life.

Sorry I would rather have no tree than a fake one. I love the smell, it's part of xmas for me. Don't care about the needles, have a broom!

But my tree does smell real and we have Xmas spray!!!!!!! I know real is better but honest Lottie eats anything she can off the floor and it isn't worth the risk. I've dug to many stones, sticks, cat food etc out of her mouth to feel safe having pine needles everywhere.

Ah well am putting mine in the conservatory this year (well more like greenhouse as is soooo crappy) so it will be safe from little hands

I don't have that luxury - nowhere to hide a tree at mine!

bring it round to mine, we could put in in the conservatory and set up a webcam for you

Virtual Christmas trees! Now that would be green.....

I used to feel like that CD, but I'm with TC now- had to make that swap.

doesn't it depend on the electricity used though hmb

Curses! My plan failed again!

LOL Drac!!!!

I love real trees but I have to agree that kids+cats+real trees doesn't work. We got a nice one from woolies about 6 years ago which still looks great.

Does anyone know where you get the pine tree sprays from though as fake definitely doesn't smell right.

My fake tree looks better than the non-drop real ones we've had in the past as there are no threadbare bits. Also, you can bend the twigs to get the right shape for your decorations

Having had real and fake, I now prefer fake, ours is very realistic, and when its decorated you simply cannot tell its fake. I always have have cinnamon and spice candles burning at christmas so that is my christmassy smell. I do like real trees but the mess and faff of getting rid of them is too much hassle.

Practicality be damned, it has to be real!

when I was little we always had a fake christmas tree and it was white! then we got a green one. I always thought how nice it would be to have a real one though.

when I left school I went to work in a restaurant and every christmas we had a huge big real christmas tree that stood in the bar area at the front of the restaurant. I hated each tree every year with a passion. If you walked past it and brushed against it it jagged you with it's needles, the vibrations through the floor would make needles fall off and towards the end of the season you just had to look at the damned thing and needles would fall off. So I vowed there and then that I would Never Ever have a real tree in my house.

WE have a little tree that was given to me as a christmas present in my first flat. It sits on top of the TV and had one big piece of tinsel round it and a few decorations but not a lot or it would look silly. And the best thing is that at the end of the season I just stick the whole thing in a big bag and shove it in a cupboard, still decorated, and then take it out the next year. No Problem! It's a lovely little tree not to small but not to big and suits my family just fine. It doesn't have any lights on it as it's not big enough but we put the lights around the inside of our living room windows and they look lovely and christmassy.

Late to this thread, but given I do C accounting for a living, I can't resist commenting. The main areas I know about are Greenhouse Gases (GHGs, esp. CO2).

HMB I think you're right that there isn't or, at least, there doesn't have to be -- a lot in it. But your logic is flawed; growing Xmas trees adds no net CO2 to the atmosphere, whereas the manufacture of artificial trees does add net CO2 (from fossil fuels used). So from a climate change perspective, real trees should be better; entirely sustainable, no net damage...

ALTHOUGH, there are extra transport costs every year when you go get a new 'real' tree. My impression is that this won't add up to much; how much GWP is there in a 4 mile-round trip in a saloon car? I don't know, myself, but I think it's pretty paltry, even with the nitrous oxide outputs. We walked to & from the garden centre to get our tree (carried tree ina cycle trailer), so pretty sustainable on our part.

EXCEPT, the greenhouse damage done by 'real' trees depends a lot on disposal methods. The greenest option with your cut-down Xmas tree is to hang it up to dry for 10 months, then burn it in a solid fuels stove at home for heat or cooking fuel. I'm guessing that this substitutes for the use of about 1.5 kg of coal.

BUT, I'm pretty sure that most "real" trees are not burnt; they go into landfills. There they don't convert into relatively benign CO2; a significant proportion gets converted to methane. Unless the landfill captures this for fuel use, methane has 25x the global warming potential of CO2; very bad. Alternatively you can have your tree mulched/shreded, which also converts the C mostly to CO2, again, not so bad compared to methane.

Another issues is where the trees are grown. Mostly large plantations in southern Scotland (or so the British Christmas Tree Grower's Association tell me), it's unclear how much of this is on lowland/thin peat. Given the open canpoy, though, as well as the practices of the industry, most of this peat would probably still behave like undisturbed peat, with regard to scavenging a lot of CO2 and a little NO2 from the atmosphere, while releasing trace amounts of methane. With regard to pollution and growing anything on peat -- isn't most the run off from here rather acidic, anyway?

Some more Christmas tree facts, raw info from the BCTGA:

About 1 million trees sourced in this country
About 1 million imported
I calculate that's 10,000-12,000 ha allocated to Xmas tree production in GB
Harvested typically 10-12 years old, but usually some trees are left longer to grown into large display type trees for businesses, town centres, etc. This is where the open-canopy comes into effect.