The Christmas tree dilemma
With Christmas ever approaching at an accelerated rate
you will no doubt start to see Christmas tree sellers in parking lots, and
U-Cut or We-Cut signs nailed to telephone poles everywhere. Oregon and Washington
produce more Christmas trees yearly than the rest of the United States combined.
Which makes sense due to our bountiful amounts of evergreens. Oregon Christmas tree
acreage is in the ballpark of 63,000 acres and harvests 6.4 million trees each
year. These trees are sent to various places in the United States as well as
around the world. This industry brings in about 110 million dollars annually.
Many
people especially environmentalists would probably weep at the numbers stated
above but the Christmas Tree industry is actually quite sustainable and is much
less invasive on the environment than most other crops. Due to the nature of
the trees which have anywhere from a 7 to 9 year growing cycle chemical
intervention has been found to harm the end product so growers generally shy
away from such things. Growers only trim the trees to give them the nice conical
shape we love and keep the ground clear to prevent weeds from stealing nutrients.
During their growth cycle the trees are able to provide habitat for birds and
other species. After harvest trees are replanted and the cycle continues.
Another nice thing is with U-Cut farms, where you go and pick out your tree and
cut it down yourself, is that there is no clear cutting. Trees are picked here
and there, leaving plenty of trees to do what they do best, make oxygen. The
trees contribute to green space eating up all that nasty carbon and can be recycled
by being turned into mulch to increase sustainability.
What
about artificial trees though you must be asking? Surely those have to be
better for the environment. Yes artificial trees are good because you’re not
chopping down a tree. However they are mostly all produced in China where they
use PVC plastics which lead to a huge carbon footprint in their production. To balance
out the horror that goes into making an artificial tree you need to use it for
10 years before carefully recycling it. Anything short of that 10 year mark and
its actually better to cut down a real tree, and if I know anything it’s that
most things built in China hardly last a decade.
Skyler Finney
Finney@pdx.edu
Sources:
http://www.christmasforest.co.uk/sustainability
No comments:
Post a Comment