Festive Foliage

Americans prefer real Christmas trees to artificial ones:

Rick Dungey, of the NCTA [National Christmas Tree Association], dismisses the artificial sort as “plastic tree-shaped decorations”. Americans tend to agree, buying more real trees than fake ones. Of 35m sold every year, 70% sprout from the ground. Despite a rise in sales a decade ago, fake trees have lost their sparkle since the financial crisis. But according to the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group that claims to represent both types of tree, 83% of homes have a fake shrub.

Leslie Horn insists on authenticity:

[U]nless you’re a slight scrooge or suffer from severe seasonal allergies, you must go with the real thing. Douglas Fir, Blue Spruce, Scotch Pine—pick your pleasure. The smell is part of the fun, and car air fresheners or kitchen candles just don’t give the same seasonal effect.

Last year, Timothy Taylor reviewed research on how real and artificial trees affect the environment:

One artificial tree has greater environmental impact than one natural tree. However, an artificial tree can also be re-used over a number of years. Thus, there is some crossover point, if the artificial tree is used for long enough, that its environmental effect is less than an annual series of trees. For example, the [2009] ellipsos study [pdf] finds that an artificial tree would need to be used for 20 years before its greenhouse gas effects would be less than those of an annual series of natural trees.

Taylor considers other factors:

[T]he environment effect of the ornaments on the trees may be as large or greater than the effect of the tree itself. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that America imported $1 billion in Christmas tree ornaments from China (the leading supplier) between January to September 2012, but only $140 million worth of artificial Christmas trees. Thus, spending on ornaments is something like six times as high as spending on [artificial] trees. The choice of what kind of lights on the tree, or whether to drape the house and front yard with lights, is a more momentous environmental decision than the tree itself.

Previous Dish on Christmas trees here and here.