12 Reasons Cutting Your Own Christmas Tree is Good for the Environment

Cutting your own Christmas tree is not only a fun family tradition, it is also better for the environment than purchasing an artificial tree or even purchasing a live tree from a tree lot. Here are 12 earth-friendly reasons why cutting a live tree is your best option for choosing a Christmas tree:

1. Cutting your own Christmas tree helps recycle the air by adding trees to the environment to produce more oxygen. Each acre of Christmas Trees produces enough oxygen to meet the daily requirements of 18 people.

2. Christmas tree farms are a sustainable agricultural resource. For ever tree that is cut down in a Christmas Tree farm, at least one seedling is planted. Often 2-3 trees are planted in its place. Or a new tree is grown from the stump of the cut tree through "stump culturing."

3. Rows of Christmas trees help stabilize humus layers in the soil, keeping the soil rich and fertile.

4. Christmas tree farm "forests" help provide habitats for birds, animals, and insects.

5. Fresh Christmas trees are less likely to catch on fire than a tree from a lot which generally has gone a long period of time without water, causing irreversible drying of the needles. A well watered tree will be almost as fresh when you take it down as it was a month ago when you cut it.

6. Fresh cut Christmas trees require no industrial process to make them, cutting back on air pollution and waste from industrial by-products. In fact, Christmas trees create cleaner air!

7. Christmas trees that are put in your green-waste bin or picked up by the fire department are composted or turned to mulch, furthering their positive environmental impact.

8. Christmas tree farms make use of land that cannot be used for any other agricultural purpose. Tree farms can be planted in cool locations, on hillsides, and in poor soil.

9. Christmas tree roots protect against sand and soil erosion.

10. Christmas trees are fully biodegradable. Artificial trees have an average life span of six years before they are tossed in a landfill where they will take centuries to decompose.

11. Christmas trees are a naturally pesticide-free crop. Trees attract the birds and wildlife that naturally keep the pest population in check.

12. Many Christmas trees in lots are never used and delivered to a landfill after Christmas. No tree is cut at a Christmas tree farm needlessly. Trees that aren't brought home by a family continue to grow another year and benefit the environment until the next Christmas season.