For the month of December, I will be writing posts that discuss how to make your holidays greener and healthier.
I’m starting with the topic of Christmas trees. I’ve been hesitant to write about this because currently in my living room, I have a Made in China, made with PVC, fake tree. All I can say is I bought it in 2001 before I knew any better and now that I’ve already made that decision, I feel that the greenest option is to keep using it for as many years as I can stand until I can give it to my parents (which saves me some guilt about it ending up in a landfill….. at least temporarily).
What is the greenest option? They say a real tree. When we first bought our fake, I thought we’d be saving all those poor real trees from being cut. But the truth is, they come from tree farms and when they are cut, new ones are planted. The only non-green thing about a real tree is the gas used to get it to you. But there is one slightly better option, one that we are seriously considering for next year. Buy a potted tree. Put it in your house, decorate it for the holidays, and once they’re over, you can plant it in your yard. This is a good option because our yard currently has only one tree. Obviously, this is not something we could do year after year, unless we want our backyard to look like a tree farm. But I would like to give it a try sometime soon. Until then, I’ll look at my current tree with a touch of eco-guilt.
