The Noisy Christmas Tree

Once again, it's that time of year, when most of us are too busy running around seeing friends and family, finishing our Christmas shopping and cooking huge amounts of food to worry much about our ecological footprints. Christmas seems to be the one annual occasion that sorts the eco bunnies from the eco butterflies. Those who are slightly scarily obsessed with being as green as humanly possible fret over whether buying a real tree or a fake one is kinder to the environment, buy all their friends and family gifts from Oxfam and will scour their nearest high street relentlessly in search of recycled wrapping paper and Christmas cards. But is all this effort really necessary?Any intelligent individual with a modicum of interest in popular culture is well aware that Santa started out life wearing green, until he got hijacked by the big bad Coca Cola Ltd, whose seasonal adverts many people now use as a measure as to whether Christmas has arrived or not. But just because Santa is no longer green, does that mean that Christmas isn't either?

The tradition of putting up a Christmas tree was apparently a tradition the entire world inherited from Germany (how silly must Hitler have felt? a tree can conquer the world; he couldn't) and in recent years Christmas trees have become a bit of a festive controversy. It was thought that buying a fake plastic tree and re-using it year after year until it resembles a toilet brush was kinder to the environment than buying a real tree every year because it meant that fewer trees had to die. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Trees Are Good, and the death of trees Is Not Good. Therefore, you would think that most eco-types would agree that fake trees are the way to go. However, since everybody became unhealthily obsessed with the contents of their recycling bin, several people have questioned whether fake plastic trees which probably aren't recyclable and will take hundreds of years to degrade in a landfill site are really better for the environment than real trees, which are, after all, typically grown especially for the purpose of being bedecked with baubles and tinsel.

One ingenious guy, the aptly named Martin Cake, a.k.a. the Christmas Tree Man, has come up with the idea of renting out living Christmas trees. Customers choose their tree, and the Christmas Tree Man will deliver it in its own pot, with a bag of feed to keep it going through the festive season. After Christmas, the Christmas Tree Man will collect said tree and re-plant it in the ground. If all is well and good, and said tree can put up with the stress of being moved indoors from outdoors and back again, not to mention the trauma of being uprooted and then re-planted a few weeks later, then said tree will go on to spread festive cheer in living rooms up and down the country for years to come. The Christmas Tree Man also donates to the Dorset Wildlife Trust and Help for Heroes. Eco-friendly and charitable... is it just possible that a solution to the great Christmas Tree Controversy has been found?

Another annual agony for enviro-bodies is what to do about wrapping paper and Christmas cards. Thankfully these days it isn't hard to find charity Christmas cards and wrapping paper that at least carries the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) logo, which usually ensures that what you are buying is the product of a responsibly managed forest. However this doesn't alleviate the fact that often there's a heck of a lot of used cards and wrap left lying about the house after Christmas. The most sensible thing to do is obviously to put it all in the recycling box, sans sellotape. However if you're anything like me, and actually like Christmas cards, you'll probably have a build-up of old cards lurking in the back of some cupboard. I don't know why, but I just can't bring myself to throw Christmas cards away; last count, I had 4 shoeboxfulls sitting gathering dust in the back of my cupboard. I figure they'll decompose eventually, or get eaten by spiders, so I don't have to throw them away...insert slightly more imaginative uses for old cards here...

The thing about Christmas is that everybody has their own traditions, their own way of celebrating, and probably their own way of helping out the environment. Or not. Whatever you're up to, have a very merry Christmas, and a green and happy new year.

xx