You’ve sourced the local, organic Christmas turkey? You’ve bought a tasteful range of Fair Trade, natural gifts or charity goats for friends and family? You’ve either sent recycled paper charity Christmas cards or given up on them entirely? What about the tree?
Real or plastic? Which would you choose?
It’s good to see so much public debate going on with this topic this year. But how do you decide what to do?
Plastic trees use valuable resources to manufacture and are often made cheaply in factories with unknown welfare standards. But they do last for years. They don’t fragrance your home with pine, but they don’t drop needles, either.
Real trees can be carbon neutral and many local councils will recycle them in January. But is it right to chop down a tree to have in your home for just 2 weeks?
And many trees are shipped in from abroad… Or cut from unmanaged forests by unscrupulous chain-saw-bearing money-makers. 
The other option is to buy a potted tree, bring it in for Christmas and grow it outside for the rest of the year. A great idea, as long as you’re strong enough to lug it around!
Personally, we’re not doing a tree this year. The Toddler is too young to understand about not pulling it over yet and the Puppy would no doubt feel the need to eat the decorations. So that made our decision easy!
But what have you decided?
Tell us what you think!
Clare
December 19th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
I purchased an artificial tree at a thrift store. Plus the ornaments/tree topper are secondhand too!
December 20th, 2006 at 5:25 am
Definitely the potted tree and then it can live on the balcony for the rest of the year.
December 20th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Plastic trees do last forever, but I reckon a lot of people still like real trees, if only for the fresh smell and the tradition of bringing home a Christmas tree. But the potted tree option sounds nice!
An artificial tree is the most common choice in my neck of the woods though, because winter doesn’t happen at all where I live, plus pine trees aren’t really common.
December 20th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
We bought a fake tree a few years ago and as much as I love the smell and beuty of a real tree, I really couldn’t justify buying one that had been cut down just to stand in our house for two weeks.
This year we’re using the same fake tree but my decorations are ones that my mum gave me years ago and are as old as me and we’ve decided against having lights.
I don’t know about anyone else but its the ridiculous number of lights that people have hanging from their houses that exasperates me!
Happy Holidays everyone! x
December 20th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
By the way, Friends of the Earth suggest decorating one of your houseplants instead which I think is a great idea!
December 21st, 2006 at 2:42 am
Last year I cut some branches from a deciduas tree, spray painted them with silver paint, and stuck theme into a pot of dirt. Then I placed my ornaments on all the little branches. It looked very lovely and non-traditional.
This year I bought one of these metal “ornament” trees that have been showing up in many catalogs. Here is a link to an example of what I mean:
http://www.smithandhawken.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=prod115171&categoryId=cat220011p&sku=115171
Anyway, I think that this will satisfy me for many years!