Real vs. Artificial Christmas Trees – An Environmental Perspective
Each year during the holiday season people begin decorating and buying gifts. For those that celebrate Christmas, an important decision is choosing a tree. This includes deciding if it will be a real or artificial Christmas tree. How does your decision impact the environment? Cost, convenience, and personal preference are all important considerations, but so too is the environmental impact.
Research has shown that locally-sourced natural trees have less environmental impact than artificial ones. An independent Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) study released by the Montreal firm Elliposos determined that real trees have less overall impact in terms of distribution, disposal, and average carbon emissions than their artificial counterparts. The LCA method allows for evaluation of potential environmental impacts of a product (or service) over its entire life cycle and takes raw material processing, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use, reuse, recycling and disposal impacts into consideration.