Is It More Environmentally Friendly to Buy a Christmas Tree on a Lot or Visit a Tree Farm?

This brings up an often-overlooked alternative for sourcing your tree: walking onto some random piece of public land and cutting one down yourself!

A Douglas fir farm in Oregon. (Jacquie Klose/Shutterstock)
By Marty Smith

Here in the heart of Christmas tree-growing country, is it more environmentally friendly to buy a tree that’s already been felled, or to single out a specimen to die while supporting a tree farm that doesn’t cut unnecessarily? —Christmas Conundrum

The most environmentally friendly thing any of us can do, Conundrum, is kill ourselves before we’ve had a chance to reproduce. However, since you’re in the market for a Christmas tree, I’m guessing that damage is already done. Any further climate-jockeying you might try is just frittering around the margins (at least until it becomes legal to spay and neuter your school-age children), so you should just do whatever’s convenient.

Your phrase “single out a specimen to die” seems designed to discourage visits to the Christmas tree farm by convincing youngsters that such a trip would combine the most depressing parts of Sophie’s Choice and A Charlie Brown Christmas, so I’m guessing you’d rather buy a tree off the nearest lot. That’s fine—and don’t worry too much about pre-felled trees being “cut unnecessarily.” It’s true that some number of cut trees (8%, by one rough estimate) go unsold. But so what? From the environment’s point of view, there’s very little difference between an unused tree that gets mulched Dec. 26 and a used one that gets mulched Feb. 1.

You can make a (slightly) stronger environmental argument against going to a tree farm since there’s driving involved. But let’s be honest: If you weren’t driving to the farm, you’d be driving somewhere else—Costco, Grandma’s, wherever. Once you’ve decided that driving in the name of family entertainment is acceptable, you may as well make a day of it.

This brings up an often-overlooked alternative for sourcing your tree: walking onto some random piece of public land and cutting one down yourself! I know this sounds like one of my fake suggestions, like putting a meth lab in your butt or whatever, but I swear, this one is real. Trees under 15 feet increase wildfire risk, so the Forest Service is happy to let you harvest one in exchange for a $5 license fee. (Google “Christmas tree permit.”)

Once your family has committed to this adventure, you can use the trip as a springboard for further disgustingly wholesome activities, like sledding, snowball fights or even—God help us—caroling. That’s what building memories is all about! (Still, better you than me.)

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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