[sgerenser]

The trees are planted and farmed specifically to be Christmas trees. If nobody bought them, they wouldn’t be planted in the first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree population (barring the small amount of Clark Griswolds out there who get their tree from a forest somewhere rather than a Christmas tree farm).

[csdvrx]

> If nobody bought them, they wouldn’t be planted in the first place, so the act of cutting down then disposing of a Christmas tree has no net impact to the overall tree population

From a carbon capture perspective, you could argue planting, cutting then burying trees is a net positive - but cutting is killing.

From a moral perspective, financially helping an industry based on planting and cutting trees while not using them for shelter (wood is used in housing) or even heat (in a stove or a fireplace) strikes me as barbaric, because it's the purposeless killing of a living creature.

Killing and eating animals (if not vegan) or plants (if vegan) is necessary as we can't opt out of food (but maybe there will be a fully synthetic replacement someday)

Yet I can opt out of killing trees for ornamental purposes - and this tech may help other people save trees, if they can't opt out of having a live Christmas tree, say for cultural or familial reasons (tradition, etc)

[fy20]

After Christmas they don't just end up in the landfill. They are often recycled into mulch. The material used for mulch needs to come from somewhere... So better for the tree to bring some joy in someone's home temporarily rather than just growing and being cut down.

[csdvrx]

I would find it morally better if mulch could be made from leaves collected in the fall, but knowing about this recycling helps think more positively about the cutting.

Thank you.

[chpatrick]

Luckily trees' whole purpose in life is for their offspring to grow so we're doing them a favor.

[LeafItAlone]

That’s all true, but most of the Christmas tree farms by me exist in land that would otherwise still be natural forest (and border forest land). There would still be trees there, as well as a whole ecosystem. So for at least the ones by me, one might consider them a net negative, ecologically?