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Monday, November 12, 2007

Eco-Friendly Christmas Trees: Live Christmas Trees Versus Artificial Christmas Trees

One of the easiest ways you can start your eco-friendly Christmas is to choose the best Christmas tree. So which is more eco-friendly, the real Christmas tree or the artificial Christmas tree? A live Christmas tree.

First of all, live Christmas trees are grown right here in the United States. Most Christmas tree farms sell their tree locally to surround towns and cities.

Artificial Christmas trees are most commonly manufactured in China. The amount of pollution emitted into the environment to simply ship the artificial Christmas tree from China far outweighs the cost of transporting live Christmas tree on the environment.

Artificial trees are made from PVC, plastic, and other non biodegradable materials. The manufacturing and production of an artificial Christmas trees emits pollutants that are harmful and not eco-friendly. Artificial Christmas tree factories emit dioxins, a by product of PVC.

Finally, consider what happens to live Christmas trees versus artificial Christmas trees when that are disposed of. Live Christmas trees can be recycled into mulch and reintroduced into the earth as a nutrient. Artificial Christmas trees are not biodegradable and simply remain in land fills for undetermined amounts of time.

While you may not throw out your artificial Christmas tree every year, chances are you may update it about once a decade. In your adult life that means you may throw away as few as 6 to 8 artificial Christmas trees, which simple remain in land fills never biodegrading. In this same time with a live Christmas tree you will have recycled and reintroduced nutrients into the earth's soil on average 60 to 80 times. You do the math!

Information Provided by Associated Content

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