By Chris Stepp

Spruce Up Austin

As the holidays sneak up on us this year we find ourselves preparing to start some of our family’s traditions. Some big and some small.

My favorite one is picking out and decorating a real Christmas tree. Other people may go another route and use an artificial tree for their holiday needs, but not this self proclaimed tree hugger.

I prefer a real Christmas tree not only for the nostalgic quality of having a beautiful spruce or fir tree in my house, that reminds me of my childhood, but because of the positive environmental impacts that real trees have.

Real Christmas trees are grown on local farms, not imported as fake ones are from places like China and are usually grown on land that in most situations would be unusable for other farming practices like poor soil conditions and steep slopes.

Currently, we have about 350 million Christmas trees growing in the U.S. And most of these trees will live for over eight years.

During this time the trees provided shelter for all kinds of wildlife: songbirds, squirrels, deer and rabbits just to name a few.

They also sequester carbon dioxide. One acre of a tree farm can absorb 11.3 lbs of carbon dioxide and produce enough oxygen for the daily needs of 18 people plus their roots stabilize the soil and help protect our water ways. We all know that artificial trees can not do that.

After the trees are grown and harvested most farms plant three seedling to replace one so that a constant supply can be maintained. With that fact in mind it makes one think that buying real Christmas trees does not reduce the tree population it actually maintains, protects and increases our tree population.

So, this holiday season if you start debating on buying a real tree or not. I advise that you do; make real Christmas trees a family tradition. They do a great number of favors for our environment as they grow and can easily be recycled when you are done with them.

It’s the tree-hugger’s best choice.