Festive fir trees in Paris

About eight million fir trees are bought each December in the United Kingdom, the Carbon Trust says. In 2020, already ten million fir trees have been sold.

About seven million of them will be thrown out at the end of the season.

Each year, more people are turning to renting real trees that can be re-planted in January. They are pot-grown trees, such as Norway spruces, which need to be watered during the rental period, and can be re-used for six years, on average. The rental trees are returned to the store where they were purchased.

A Friends of the Earth UK spokesperson said: ‘A real tree will be better than a new artificial one, which uses a lot of resources to produce and will take decades, or even centuries, to break down. But growing a real tree that’s only used for a few weeks each year is an intensive use of land.’ That’s because fir trees take seven or eight years to grow. The Friends of the Earth UK spokesperson said that a rental tree can go on growing and continuing to absorb carbon emissions which is better for the environment.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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