Christmas Trees for Environmentalists across ID, UT, and WA

You can call it the third option.  A living tree for Christmas.  You can set this up in the house, give it some water, and cover it with your favorite decorations.  When you’re done, you can plant the tree outside.  I suppose you could try growing it indoors, but needles, pitch, and pine cones can be messy, and after a few years, you’ll need to raise the roof.  I saw the trees pictured outside my local Fred Meyer.

The Living Option is the Recycling of an Old Idea

About 30 years ago, I first heard about buying living trees.  I interviewed an environmentalist who made a legitimate claim that artificial trees are a disposal nightmare, at least in terms of landfills.  The same person didn’t like seeing real trees chopped down.  However, I’ll counter that they’re easily disposed of, and when mulched, you can ensure the organic matter returns to the ground.  If you have a lot of land, and instead of just piling up old trees, you can provide habitat and safety for wildlife.

There are Many Factors to Weigh

Artificial trees mostly come out of factories, with varying quality.  Growing live trees is a more difficult endeavor.  An uncle planted trees on his farm, but sold the entire farming enterprise before the trees matured.  If you plan on growing them, expect a lot of labor trimming for a decade before you actually can bring a product to market.  And it’s a challenge geographically.  The American Northwest has some fine ground.  The largest producer is Oregon, with North Carolina a close second.  Those trees travel a lot of miles by truck, which has me arguing that an artificial tree that you own for many years may still be the better bet for an environmentalist.