Did you know that we cut 25 MILLION Christmas trees every year in the US? They cover a million acres and they take 6-15 years to grow. What would Christmas be without having fresh Christmas trees in our homes? Artificial trees just don’t have the pine scent that wafts throughout the house. I struggled with this dilemma about 25 years ago and found a solution that would eliminate cutting trees and yet still provide the pine scent in our homes. We could build an Eco Xmas Tree!
By creating a “trunk” out of 2” by 4s,” and drilling holes up and down the trunk, we could build a Xmas tree using cut pine branches. Yup! I built the first Eco Xmas tree in 1994. We cut branches off our pine trees on the property and put them in the holes in the wooden “trunk.” Our Eco Xmas tree was perfect because there were no bald spots – we could easily replace the skimpy branches with fuller ones if needed.
Our Eco Xmas tree smelled just like a real Christmas tree and it looked even better. We decorated it just like we did real cut trees and everyone had to peek at the “trunk” because they didn’t believe it wasn’t a real tree. Best part, it was easy to disassemble. Instead of having to deal with a huge dead tree after Christmas, we simply pulled out the branches and burned them in the fireplace or composted them.
So this season, build your Eco Xmas Tree instead of cutting a fresh tree. With all of the fires we’ve had this year, we really need those 25 million trees to keep producing oxygen and sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere!
