Love your christmas tree

Nearly 7 million Christmas trees get tossed into landfill every year which is tragic for the tree and tragic for the planet. This powerful plant absorbs carbon, provides oxygen and a home for thousands of species. So how can we hold on to our much loved Christmas traditions without trashing the planet?

The first and absolute best option is to choose a live tree. If you’ve got some space in the garden to leave it out every year and able repot it so it grows with your family, awesome – do this. People become quite attached to their living Christmas trees and it’s like celebrating the festive season with an old friend every year. If you can buy a tree that hasn’t been treated with chemicals so much the better. Don’t forget a big benefit of live trees is encouraging biodiversity so we don’t want to nuke all the little critters who call them home. Real Christmas trees are also less flammable so there are safety benefits too.

The second best option is to rent a live tree. You can rent a Christmas tree from the Cotswold Fir shop (also known as Rental Claus), also available for delivery to London. Supplies are limited though so you need to reserve yours early in the year. If you haven’t managed to think about it this year don’t worry, you can plan to have your very own live tree for Christmas 2020. Loveachristmastree is another great tree rental site with no down sides; renting rather than buying a tree saves you about 30% of the cost. What’s not to love?

Cut Christmas trees are preferable to artificial trees. Although artificial are reusable but they emit large amounts of carbon dioxide in production and the dreaded plastic they are made from is practically never biodegrade so they’re not a great option. If you have one already, keep it and try and make it last at least ten years.

If you choose a cut Christmas tree make sure you recycle it and avoid sending it to landfill. The slow decomposition releases methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas and terrible for the planet. Recycled trees can be turned into wood chippings for parks and woodland paths. You can find out if your local recycling collection will cover this here.

If you have a potted Christmas tree we’d love to see some pictures! Tag @monkeywrenchmag in your Christmas tree pictures.