Earth Equity News

Environmentalists Support Harvesting Christmas Trees. By Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee, 12/2/10. “The Nature Conservancy is campaigning for people to use real Christmas trees, not the manufactured kind, as a way to lower our carbon footprint… [We are] all about trees,’ said Frank Lowenstein, Climate Adaptation Strategy Leader for the organization. ‘They clean our air, they clean our water.’ Even when you cut them down? ‘Real (Christmas) trees give real benefits,’ Lowenstein said. ‘Not in the one tree you buy, but in the stream of trees you support.’ His point is that a tree cut down from one of the nation's estimated 12,000 tree farms supports the continued existence of that farm. Fewer than one in 10 farm trees are harvested each year, said Vanessa Martin, California spokeswoman for the Nature Conservancy… The ones that stay provide the benefits. Manufactured trees, by contrast, are largely petrochemical (polyvinyl chloride or PVC) products shipped from overseas with few environmental assets... And after the tree's served its purpose, it can be chipped and composted, used for energy generation or ground cover – something that most jurisdictions now do, instead of dumping it in the landfill. Also something you can't do with a PVC tree.”