What's better: Real Christmas trees or artificial ones?

Interviewees:

Curtis VanderSchaaf, assistant professor and forestry extension specialist, Mississippi State University
William Paddock, cofounder and CEO of WAP sustainability
Julia Georgallis, baker, food writer and author of the book How to eat your Christmas tree

Transcript:

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It's the time of the year when it gets colder in the northern hemisphere, and it just feels like Christmas cheer is in the air… And for most people, there's no Christmas without a Christmas tree. You'll see them offered in parking lots of grocery stores, advertised on Christmas tree farms where you can choose and cut your own tree… or you'll find artificial trees standing in aisles of supermarkets. It's a huge industry: Just in the United States alone, it's estimated that between 25 and 30 million real Christmas trees are sold each season. And about 80% of those displaying a Christmas tree at home have said they want to put up an artificial one, says the American Christmas Tree Association.

Growing up, my family has always had a real Christmas tree — we usually went somewhere to choose and cut our own from Christmas tree farms nearby. But I remember my grandparents had an artificial Christmas tree.

And I've been thinking: would a real tree be better, simply because it's sustainable and can grow back…? We don't want to add more plastic in the form of artificial trees to the plastic dump that already exists in the world... But is cutting down live trees that had been storing CO2 just for a few weeks of holiday fun really that much better?…

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "If you're using your artificial tree for 10 years, that's better than reusing the artificial tree for two years, right? I think the longer you can reuse your artificial tree, I think that's certainly going to be a benefit to the environment."

That's Curtis VanderSchaaf, an assistant professor forestry extension specialist, with Mississippi State University. He's been looking into the pros and cons of the different types of Christmas trees. He said no matter whether it's an artificial or a real tree, it's important to check where your tree is coming from.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "Here in Mississippi, are you buying a local tree grown in Mississippi, or are you buying something like Douglas fir from the Pacific Northwest, like Washington state on the coast. Or are you buying a Fraser fir from North Carolina? But if you can buy local, that's obviously gonna reduce your carbon footprint. Now beyond that, if you can cut your own tree down from your own property, well, that's a pretty low carbon footprint."

North Carolina and Washington are two of the biggest Christmas tree growing regions in the US, among Oregon and Michigan. To get a tree from Washington state all the way down south to Mississippi, that's over 2,000 miles… and while Curtis VanderSchaaf points out that they would be shipped in bulk, it still is a considerable add-on to the carbon budget.

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If people in the US want to find out which tree is grown locally, he said a good idea would be to get in touch with local Christmas tree associations or extension specialists like him. Or you take things into your own hands.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "Where a person will go out to a tree farm and you can either cut the tree yourself or you can have somebody cut it for you and so that's a very common thing here in the in the US... to go out and go to a local tree farm and cut the tree there and then bring it back to your house."

It can be a fun outing for the entire family to go and choose your tree. Some even have hayrides or offer a visit from Santa Clause, he said.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "The local tree farms obviously are going to be closer to you. When you're going to Walmart or Lowe's or Home Depot, many of those are going to be from other parts of the country, at least here in Mississippi. Now, if I'm in Washington state and I go to Lowe's or Home Depot, obviously many of those trees are going to be local, right? Here in the US, I believe North Carolina and Washington, Oregon and then the lake states which is Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, and then in Canada, that's where you have a lot of the large operational commercial Christmas tree farms and that's what you find in a lot of the retail stores. There's nothing wrong with buying those trees. But obviously if I'm in Mississippi or if I'm in New Mexico, or if I'm in Louisiana, if I can buy a local tree from that state, that's going to be better for the local economy and you would think it would in many ways, reduce the carbon footprint."

The US government also gives out permits to cut down trees in selected forests, so that might be another local alternative.

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But it's still another healthy tree getting cut down just to be looked at for a couple of weeks… I'm wondering how Curtis, as a forestry professor, feels about all this …wasteful tree cutting.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "I certainly don't want people cutting trees down just to waste trees, but there's nothing wrong with utilizing and harvesting trees. They're going to grow back and in many ways you want to utilize and harvest trees, at least to some extent, meaning you don't want trees to start competing with one another."

So in moderation, cutting down trees can be good?

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "If you have too many trees for the amount of light, moisture and nutrients in that forest, you're gonna start getting mortality. You're gonna start getting unhealthy trees, and that sometimes can be a hazard. That can be a fire hazard and it can lead to disease and it can lead to insect infestations. We've seen that here in Mississippi. We probably had 20 million dead pine trees in 23 because of a severe drought and then we had too much too many trees on the landscape, too much competition."

Still, trees help store CO2, carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas heating up our planet. And if we cut down trees, we release that amount of carbon back into the atmosphere.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "At some point, older trees aren't sequestering as much carbon at least as younger trees. So sometimes you know, having younger trees on the landscape is a good thing, right? They're growing more vigorously and faster than the older trees."

That's not to say to cut down old trees, he said.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "I'm saying like active forest management is not a bad thing. Because you do want kind of a mix of age classes on the landscape and I think that'll have a more healthy vigorous forest than having all your trees and old growth. I think you'll sequester carbon more by having a variety of ages on the landscape than necessarily having all acres in in old growth."

Cutting down tree after tree after tree… I wonder how many years would you theoretically need to reuse your artificial tree to get to the break-even point?

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The American Christmas Tree Association commissioned a study to compare both types in what's called a Life Cycle Assessment.

William Paddock: "In the in the study, what we were comparing was a 6 1/2 foot Fraser fir that was grown in North Carolina."

That's William Paddock, one of the cofounders and CEO of WAP sustainability, the US-based consulting firm that was tasked with comparing the carbon footprint of the trees. The study came to the conclusion: "artificial trees have a more favorable effect on the environment if reused for at least five years."

William Paddock: "It was compared to a 6 1/2 foot tree, artificially kind of, you know, medium low quality entry level price point, produced in China. And then probably one of the most interesting notions of the study is what happens to a live cut tree when you're done with it, you know, and people do lots of different things, right?"

Some might burn the tree, just dump it into the landfill, have it decompose on their land, shred it into tiny wood chips and so on and so forth.

William Paddock: "On the 6th Christmas of using an artificial tree five times, that's no matter what you do, no matter what in the life scenario it is, it can't be more impactful than that. So that's the ultimate break-even considering the worst, the most conservative in the life scenario."

So one long-lasting artificial tree beats cutting down six live Christmas trees, according to that math.

William Paddock: "It's a lot of mass of material, six different trees versus one that gets put up, taken down, put back up, taken down, put back up. I have an artificial Christmas tree that I've had now for 13 years. I'm well ahead of the six-year break-even point. My personal experience is if you buy a tree and take care of it and put it away and mine lives in a box, the same box that came in. And you know, it's still in good shape."

So the fate of the artificial Christmas tree is clear: it goes back into the box or storage until the next season rolls around. But what do we do with a live Christmas tree? It definitely shouldn't end up in a landfill, says Curtis VanderSchaaf.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "Let's say you just let the tree rot outside, you're going to have oxygen there, or if you're composting at your house and you're continually turning over that compost pile, you're going to have greater amount of oxygen along with that decomposition, that greater amount of oxygen, then it's gonna lead to aerobic conditions and that'll lead to more of a release of carbon dioxide, which is not necessarily a a good thing, right? But in the landfill with the anaerobic it's gonna lead to methane, a lot more release of methane. And from what I was reading on the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, they say that methane can be considered to be 28 times more potent than CO2, carbon dioxide, at trapping heat in the atmosphere."

There are several ideas to reuse the live tree after our Christmas celebrations are over: You could make wood chips out of it, donate it to a zoo where animals can play and snack on it. If you have a big backyard, you could also dump it there where it might serve as habitat for wildlife as it decomposes. Some counties also come collect old trees.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "Here in the US I believe some retailers will take the trees and chip them for you. Sometimes we have local agencies, perhaps like Boy Scouts or something similar to that, they'll have community drives. I know some cities have recycling services that'll come get your Christmas tree and I believe that they'll do some type of chipping or some type of composting beyond just putting it into a landfill. So there are definitely opportunities to recycle your real tree as opposed to throwing it away in, in in the trash."

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One particular way to make use of a tree after the holidays are over… is…to eat it. Yep, you heard that right. Eating your Christmas tree.

Julia Georgallis: "What I found in the last 10 years of experimenting, you can technically eat the whole tree in the sense that you can use the needles a little bit like how you would use like for example Rosemary. You know you use it as a herb, but you don't necessarily eat the Rosemary or like a Bay leaf."

That's Julia Georgallis, a baker, food writer and author of the book How to eat your Christmas tree.

Julia Georgallis: "Pine nuts, right? Pine nuts are something that we never really associate as part of a Christmas tree, but they come from a pine tree."

Ten years ago, she started a supper club in London with a friend to encourage people to think about sustainability at Christmas time and served up some food.

Julia Georgallis: "We wanted to look at eating a Christmas tree, not just throwing it away just because we like the idea of it being like a celebratory meal. You know you have celebratory meals around Christmas time, so why not celebrate by eating your Christmas tree, you know? Why not make it part of the meal?"

If you're like me and you've never eaten parts of a Christmas tree and wonder what it tastes like: Julia says it's delicious. And every tree variety comes with its own unique flavor.

Julia Georgallis: "What I thought was quite funny was Christmas trees don't really taste like they smell. So spruce is actually almost more like vanilla, which is really interesting, I think. Fir is like quite grassy, has like a kind of very grassy, kind of more citrusy flavor. And pine is quite woody."

She's served dishes made with Christmas tree ingredients, drinks, and … ice cream. And she says making it was super easy.

Julia Georgallis: "You make a custard base and then you steep like infuse the needles in that custard for not very long for sort of five minutes, and the custard really takes on the flavor of the needles. And then once you've done that, then you would freeze, well, you strain the needles out of the ice cream first. And then you put the custards infused with Christmas trees in the freezer and actually it works really really well. I think it works much much better with spruce and fir. Those two are like the they have a much stronger flavor than pine."

But watch out: Not all type of Christmas trees okay to snack on. She says spruce, fir and pine are fine, but cypress and cedar trees are not edible. And another word of warning:

Julia Georgallis: "Unfortunately most of the trees that we would buy from the supermarkets or the High Street shop selling Christmas trees, they've all been sprayed with things. You know, they're sprayed with pesticides. I've seen I've seen trees sprayed with like green paint to make them greener."

So if you plan on eating parts of your Christmas tree, make sure to get one that has no chemicals.

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And then there's of course the age-old question: What do we need? And can we make do with less?

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "If you have a 12-foot ceiling in your home, nothing says you gotta get a 12-foot artificial tree, right? You can get a 5-foot or a 6- foot artificial tree."

…says forestry professor Curtis VanderSchaaf.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "These artificial trees anymore doing a really good job of mimicking actual trees. There are certain artificial tree let's just say quote un quote species that are gonna have less foliage by nature, right? So they're gonna use less plastic."

And: can we learn to live with small imperfections? Curtis says you don't have to throw the entire tree away if a branch breaks.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "My family, we've had an artificial tree from my parents down to me now for 25 years and it still looks very good, but there is definitely some nuances. It's not perfect, but I'm willing to accept that Sarah, because I want to keep that artificial tree. So what I'm saying is sometimes, you know, we don't need to have a perfect tree every year we can accept some little you know, little nuances with the tree, and as long as we're willing to accept that, we can keep that tree out of a landfill."

If you move and want to get rid of that artificial tree because it's too big for the new apartment or house: you can always donate or recycle.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "I've made a little tree sets like for train sets or stuff like that. You can take that foliage and use that foliage to represent trees. So I think there's a variety of ways that you can recycle that tree."

Another issue that's rather important is the kind of lights put on a tree. Curtis says he keeps his tree unlit. But even if you opt for lights, there are things you can do.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "You know, I'm willing to help reduce the carbon footprint, I'm gonna put one light set on as opposed to six light sets on this tree, and I'm gonna use LED as opposed to incandescent. And then also related to that, I don't know if you need to have your lights on all night."

Ultimately, it comes down to buying durable goods versus something temporary, quality over quantity, all three interview partners say. And: All our choices matter, not just the tree purchase.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "A round trip flight from Los Angeles to Boston is probably gonna produce 30 times more the lifetime emissions of a typical artificial Christmas tree."

William Paddock: "So you're talking like point...less than .1% of a person's annual carbon footprint is dictated by this tree decision. So I mean, it's tiny, right? And then, if you used 400 incandescent, so not LED, but incandescent tree lights for four hours per day for 18 days. So think of like the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, you know, takes a couple days to get it set up, whatever, so for 18 days that would 4 hours a day, 400 lights, 18 days would be bigger impact than either one of the trees."

Of course it still adds up, because it’s not just one household celebrating Christmas in the US. According to the American Christmas Tree Association, 99 percent of Americans plan do display at least one tree.

Curtis VanderSchaaf: "Consider all the other things that you're doing during the holiday season that may have a much greater impact. Think about driving in your vehicle every night and you're going around driving 50 miles every night looking at Christmas tree lights, right? Think of the amount of gas used with something like that."

William Paddock: "If they're climate forward and really wanna take the numerical approach, then maybe a Christmas tree with no lights that's artificial might be the best option for you and keep it more than six years. If natural, nature-based things are more of focus and you're not a fan of plastics, then you know, do the live cut tree, it's a small percentage of your total footprint. And then again maybe there too, you don't put lights on it. And you'd have a better, a better impact there as well."

I'm starting to think the best way might be to get the best of both worlds — by reusing a natural live tree! That way you wouldn't need to cut down a live tree every year and had the same advantage to the artificial tree — that you'd use it over and over again. Like a potted Christmas tree that gets put back outside again. With roots and all.

William Paddock: "That makes a lot of pragmatic sense. I think just the logistics of that are harder, right, to preserve the root ball and move that in and out of a house. Make sure that it's taken care of over the period of time."

But it's definitely doable!

William Paddock: "Where I grew up in Ohio, there's my parents' first house, they did that. I go back home, I can drive by a house that has my first Christmas tree and then and it's this huge tree. So it's now 40 plus years old. We were just up there earlier in the year and I drove my kids by and I said that was Daddy's first Christmas tree. And you know, there's something endearing about that."

Julia Georgallis: "I haven't kept a Christmas tree for a long time. I did actually have a Christmas tree that I was growing for quite a long time, just in a pot. But it died a couple of years ago. I think eventually if you don't plant them in the ground, they don't really like it. But I tend to use my house plants. I have a really big cactus in my house and I've been like, decorating the cactus."

Admittedly, that isn't easy to do if you live in a densely packed city in a tiny apartment, of course... But who knows, maybe that could be a new business idea…rent your potted Christmas tree for the season. Some places already offer that option.

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How are you celebrating the holidays? Do you have a Christmas tree or a house plant you decorate? Do you have a family Christmas tradition? Let us know in the comments or send us an email: [email protected]. That's our episode this week. It was produced by me, Sarah Steffen, and edited by Neil King. Thanks for listening and Merry Christmas. 

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