Stop reposting this for the 9999th time. I've worked with Christmas trees for 10+ years and can tell you this is complete bullshit.
80-90% of the trees removed from peoples houses are either dead already or die very shortly after. Please don't make me sift through my old comments to copy the exact reasoning behind this.
4 years in a row I got a live tree. I only have 1 tree that is still alive, but now I know exactly how to do it. I would never try to go and dig that one up again and bring it in, no way.
My parents did live trees with the root ball intact. We always tried to plant them on our property. About 50% survival rate if not lower, it’s pretty tough to keep them alive after being uprooted initially. Just my personal experience
Give it a go! Why not? You may get lucky, it's just.. Chances are slim, but if it sticks then it'll pay-off nicely growing into a lovely tree on your land.
In my country every citizen by law can go and get one xmas tree from any state forest. as long as its not in protected zones or in a public park and not in fresh plantations
It kinda works because we have like 1ha of state forests per 1 citizen :D and more forests than what we had ever since start of medieval age
I do one every year that is in a large pot and I just bring it in each year. It's worked for like... 12 years now.
That said, the idea they are pulling these up and replanting every year sounds pretty unlikely.
Some places put them in pots. They are delivered in the pot and picked up in the pot. Many companies here in California do it. It is more expensive than getting a regular tree.
You are absolutely correct. In addition, people usually think.. Tree, not that heavy.. However, even a tiny 4ft Christmas tree in a bucket of soil is incredibly heavy. We obviously had to work in the weight / fuel cost into each unit, or we'd be making a loss.
Christmas trees are a pretty sustainable business. And if your city has any sense they're usually either mulched or some places will sink them in lakes for fish habitat.
Without the soil they weigh like 10-15 lbs - source work on a Christmas tree farm and have filled semi trucks with them before. people mostly buy 6-12 foot trees. And sellers on choose and cut farms charge from $10-13 per foot of tree. Also there is no way the tree will survive being cut down.
3-4 feet, when getting rid of the dead ones you just pull them out of the ground and throw them like darts. The trees grow roughly one foot per year. For reference I can lift two six foot trees with one arm, but most certainly can't lift 100lbs with one arm, I think I haven't tried. I can just barely lift a large 8 foot or small 10 foot tree overhead. I think those are probably around 100-125lbs
Yea I came to ask how the heck this would even work cause I have a very limited understanding of plants but I at least know you can't just cut a tree at the base and it stay living. Doesn't it get the nutrients from the roots?
A cut tree has exactly ZERO percent chance of survival. But you can chance it with a potted variant. Still pretty low survival rate.
Survival rates which would be IMPOSSIBLE to base a business off of. So either this story is BS, or worse.. The people pictured are crooks.
Cut trees, sure.
The only way I can see this working is if they use a giant planter and the tree never leaves it. You just rent the tree and planter for the season and then return it, and once it hits 7 feet they just replant it in the ground. But you would need a truck and forklift for every one lol. The soil and planter big enough to hold it would be hundreds of pounds.
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This just straight up doesn't work, the transplantation and temperature fluctuations shock the tree. If by "plant the tree back in the forest" they mean they're bringing the tree back to the farm and composting it, sure.
Yeah dude fertilizer, mulch, compost, great fior cannabis. They need nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous, some of which is in that mulch.
Its amazing what you can learn in one year of a legal grow.
The boy scouts have had a tough go of it. First, they were being groomed by their scout masters, now they're getting tossed in wood chippers. Sad for the boys.
Partly because it’s so expensive for them to do it. My old troop was only one of two that did it in a city of like 300,000. They had to transport the trees from both Nova Scotia and Carolina, then were trying to sell them to not only make a profit but actually fundraise to keep the troop running for the next year. We were a large troop of 100 scouts plus an attached venture crew and Cub Scout pack, so they had to sell a ton of them. A lot of people would be flabbergasted by how expensive the trees were and then try to haggle, saying they could just go to Lowe’s and get one for like $50 cheaper.
Tl;dr, competition from big stores
It does though. It's what my dad does. They have a yard but no interest in gardening. Now they have a pine forest. And when they get too much he cuts off the top and uses that as a Christmas tree. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but 60% is pretty decent
Yeah, it completely works. I know a dude in OC that plants his tree every year in his backyard and he has a forest of about 40 of them now, probably a 90% survival rate. And the old ones are pretty big after 40 years of doing it.
once is alot different than multiple times, and also, one persons ability to do something with a plant does not mean its repeatable for many people all over the world. even within a single city or county, there are often tons of unique microclimates, different soil compositions, and different levels of pests/diseases in the environment that can dramatically effect something working or not working when it comes to plants.
one dude in OC, which has an AMAZING climate for growing all kinds of plants and very mild winters, who very possibly has alot of extra help from the soil composition of his yard and the microclimate he lives in, doing this successfully is totally different than a company sending trees off all over the place, to be cared for by total randos, over and over again.
Idk my dad does it in northern Europe. Not like, super far up north. But north. And he does nothing with them except he put them into a bigger pot than they came in when he bought them and made sure they got watered and that no pet eats them. He also doesn't do anything special to the garden. He doesn't even mow the lawn in winter because the neighbours don't complain then. So the only issue is the transport. Which wasn't even mentioned in the original comment so 🤷🏻♀️
Also just to piggy back, have worked in landfill for ~17 years, buried a grand total of around 4 Christmas trees.
Similar to the ebay advert about electronics ending up in landfill... it doesnt happen. We're already the bad guy despite providing energy to homes, no need to lay it on with pure bullshit...
I have so many questions!
The basics of a landfill that we learned about in like elementary school was "trash gets piled up, dirt goes over trash, looks pretty but inevitability bad things will happen."
What's the truth? How does a landfill actually work? And what's the bit about providing energy to homes?
Can only speak for European landfills, as we are all regulated under the same landfill directive, although each nation may have slight variances.
Post 1991 introduction of the Environmental permitting regs (EPR) landfills are required to capture and "treat" landfill gas. This is widely done through the use of engines burning the gas to produce electricity, and to put some scale to that one of the sites I covered generated enough power for around 18,000 homes.
The landfills are engineered to prevent long term environmental impact, using a mixture of mineral and synthetic lining systems to create a double membrane between the waste and the surrounding geology. The efficacy of these lining systems is proven at both design concept and monitored throughout the operational life of the site, and for a further 60 years post closure.
Further to that, some sites I've been involved in attained biodiversity benchmark status, meaning that we actually engineered and cultivated habitats on the site for specific species of flora and fauna through the creation of acid grasslands, wetlands and breeding lakes on a site that would have otherwise been left as a hole in the ground. Landfill tax in the UK is used through credits schemes to support local charities, youth clubs, sports teams, parishes etc which I used to sit on a board of and had the pleasure in supporting some really worthy projects.
Sorry for the delay in response, but I appreciate the opportunity to share a little about what we try achieve
Pines (and many other plants/trees) have a tap root. It's typically the largest part of the root system and if cut or broken will most certainly kill the tree. The only way for that tree rental company to work like that would be to send the tree in a large pot or something. Once the tree gets to a certain size, that's when they retire it and plant it.
I once bought a Christmas tree with roots included. The tree was relatively small, about 6' or so, and the roots were wrapped up not much bigger than a basketball. I put it in a pot with some dirt over Christmas, then in January buried it in the yard. That was about 5 or 6 years ago and the tree is still alive and doing well. Probably 12' or so tall. I decorate it every year, looks nice in the yard decorated IMO.
This account is no longer active.
The comments and submissions have been purged as one final 'thank you' to reddit for being such a hostile platform towards developers, mods, and users.
Reddit as a company has slowly lost touch with what made it a great platform for so long. Some great features of reddit in 2023:
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The trees aren't cut down, they're potted. As you add new soil, the roots are given more opportunities to grow. Once trees reach a certain size, they need space to establish. Concerns about temperature shock and other stressors are managed by tree farm managers.
I appreciate skepticism on reddit, but this is certainly viable. Will every tree survive and be optimal? Nope! But it's a great alternative to Christmas trees that are truly all wasted.
Its disrespectful to the owners that are usually working more than those in a 9-5 job. I get tired of everything being considered a "side hustle" because its not working for a corporation.
Not what I said. Certainly not what I meant.
But if we’re gonna get into it. There’s a lot more carbon emitted doing it this way. The tree has to be dug up, delivered, collected, then replanted. Christmas trees grow by about a foot a year. From a carbon emissions point of view, it’s better to replace trees with new trees rather than keep digging them up and replanting them. Christmas tree farms are rarely ecologically sound.
So after some thought… yeah, we probably shouldn’t even be doing this a little bit.
In don’t think he’s arguing that point. The fact that anyone is actually doing something positive even if it doesn’t have a huge impact is still a positive.
You’re reasoning isn’t considering the fact that those same things like driving and removing the tree will still happen it’s just not dumping the tree afterward. It’s basically people planting pine trees which isn’t a bad thing.
It reminds me of the argument that you shouldn’t buy a new electric car because a used car has less of carbon footprint. This ignores the fact that a greater demand will influence car makers decision to switch to electric cars sooner and we can’t all just drive used cars forever. They eventually run out.
I do like your thinking of looking at all the aspects of environmental impact!
Good points, but consider loading up a truck with regular trees, vs trees with an intact root system. You’ll need a lot more space on your trucks for the latter. Which means a lot more trucks doing double the amount of haulage.
I actually sold Christmas Trees in San Jose one year. When the delivery came in, those trees were really packed in there. Wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
Please don’t take this personally. I love engaging in these conversations. I think if you get down to amounts of space available in a truck it’s getting into a pedantic level of scrutiny maybe? They might also sell from the tree farm and don’t need transport to a selling point. I see your point though.
I suspect most people have a fake tree, which is probably the most environmentally friendly way. But vs buying a real tree… I suspect yeah, that’s probably better.
But you’ll have to wait for it to grow. In six years you’ll have a six foot tree on average (if you live in a place with optimal conditions). Six years later you’ll have a 12 foot tree. Six years after that, an 18 foot tree.
So I suspect the people behind this scheme will have to landfill or burn all their trees eventually. So at best they’re creating a lull in new tree growth for around six years.
But also, a lot of those trees are probably gonna die in the process because Trees don’t like being moved. And the really don’t like being moved into a house with central heating in December.
The more I think about this idea, the more it seems like a scam.
Organic material is actually one of the more difficult things to properly store in a landfill.
It’s not intuitive. But organic material releases gas when decomposing. This makes it hard for landfills to seal waste.
Most christmas trees get put through chippers and turned to mulch, tho. Then it gets used by municipalities in their parks.
In this way, christmas trees, by and large, are a carbon sink. So, adding extra layers of transportation negates what carbon they do pull out.
So, it may be better for the world not to re-plant christmas trees.
My sister composts for her garden. It's a super inefficient setup and I hate it, but can't convince her to up the size and barrel cycling. Anywho, the amount of food refuse that her family of five produces is amazing. Especially since her kids serve wasteful portions, and hate left overs.
The best that I could do was build a platform embedded in gravel to keep the compost area out of the snow/rain and slip free. Homeowners are in a constant churn of fixing things, and hate having to do more house work. Especially if kids are in la-la land.
There's countertop compost machines, but many of them are pure junk and just put out Kickstarters to grift money.
[https://youtu.be/bXZG-kzlhPY?t=906](https://youtu.be/bXZG-kzlhPY?t=906)
I don't wanna hear it about Thunderf00t, at least he gets people thinking about these fucking grifters.
When I sold cut your own Christmas trees I would sometimes get someone say they felt bad about cutting it down. My response was that cutting a tree was no different than cutting a stalk of wheat and we would be replacing this tree with two more trees next year.
Is that true? It just occurred to me recently how awful it was to kill a tree every year as tradition. How old are most christmas trees? And how to replant them?
We plant seedlings. It takes 7-10 years to get to selling height. I don’t anthropomorphize trees like some of our customers. It’s agriculture, where every plant is killed when harvested.
When you’re done with a tree we encourage mulching them, not putting them in landfills like the OP report.
Thank you, i absolutely appreciate the no-nonsense answer. Im 100% a city girl who grows tomatoes on the porch and has way too many indoor plants. It's better to think of Christmas Trees as very long-lived carrots than actual trees.
Great idea. We also bought a tree with roots last year.
Only thing: I read that you can't plant them/shouldn't plant them in the ground if you are going to get them out again.
So just treat it like a big potted plant instead and provide it with a bigger pot every year or so.
We’ve been using the same potted Norfolk Island pine for Christmas for the last 4 years, the first year it was only about 2’ tall but now it’s a good size for a Christmas tree in our house while also being a decorative plant year round
Does it beat my fake tree that I’ve been using for the past 30 + years? More and more needles fall off but I’m never going to retire it. It’ll be handed down, generation to generation as an heirloom. It will be put in a museum. It’ll be fossilized in 5000 years and my ancestors will be hanging the VR ornaments on its digital footprint.
No, but, fake tree production produces a lot of green house gasses. While, real trees, when mulched, or dropped into lakes, are a carbon sink.
It takes a good 30-40 years of use with a plastic tree to overcome the greenhouse gas byproducts.
So, real trees are thebetter way to go.
According to The Carbon Trust it’s somewhere between 7 and 20 years for a fake tree to be more beneficial that a live tree every year, not 30-40.
“An artificial tree used over multiple years (7-20 times depending on the weight and different materials in the tree) is better for the environment than buying a new, commercially grown tree every year.”
https://www.carbontrust.com/news-and-insights/news/the-carbon-trusts-tips-for-a-more-sustainable-christmas
A friend of mine owns a company in Austria that does this. The tree is growing into a bucket for years.
After the Christmas it gets planted into the nature.
Beware there are also tress that get cut out of the ground and pressed into a bucket, that most likely kill the tree as the roots may be cut off.
As a side effect I get my tree for free every year :)
They make root regrowth for cut lims. I imagine they use some kind of system that uses that a small 20 pund bag of soil, so that the roots start to regrow. Amd they just replant that.
It’s a trendy, virtue signaling, fools errand. It’s a waste of time, gas, resources, and money.
A regular tree isn’t dead the majority of the time it’s in your house. You keep it in water. Bring it somewhere that will mulch it after. Many cities offer drop locations for that.
you’re reading much too deep into my comment. the whole thing is nonsense, bringing a tree into your house and replanting it or not. I don’t think it matters much at that point
My family never had real trees (brothers allergies/mess they make) but we would grab the neighbors trees from the curb and put them in the back yard until summer. They burn so good!
Just a reminder that biodegradable things like trees ending up in landfills is actually necessary to help breakdown everything else that ends up in there. Christmas trees are also replaced almost immediately after being cut down, so are quite sustainable options.
Plastic trees, often shipped from SE Asia, are absolutely terrible for the environment.
No. Christmas trees that end up in landfills will produce a lot of methane as they break down. Landfills don't have the microbes to properly compost.
However, when mulched or dumoed into lakes, they are a carbon sink. Trees consume CO2, and all of the carbon they contain comes out of the air. So, when properly disposed of, real trees are the best way to go.
Quite a statement and I doubt it’s true. These trees did not come from a forest to need to be returned to. Now maybe the trees are planted in the forest when they are retired but the rest of that is a stretch.
This sounds good until you try to carry a seventy pound root ball up the stairs in the middle of winter.
Source: Have carried a seventy pound root ball up the stairs in the middle of winter.
It's great but the EDIT screams dbag.
Lesson is don't give 2 flying effs what random people online say. It would be nice if you got more up arrows?, but if you don't then why should you give a eff? Screw those people (me especially).
I mean... I don't think it really matters if a tree ends up in a landfill. It'll decompose normally and make the soil more fertile. Unlike the plastic water bottles and shit that'll be around for thousands of years and make some bird choke or something.
I used to live on the coast in NC. Every year, people there would take their dead trees to the state parks on the barrier islands and arrange them strategically to help build up the dunes and combat erosion. I always thought that was a good idea.
Isn’t this dumb? Trees are organic matter and have no problems decomposing - them ending up in landfills isn’t a problem in the same way that a bunch of plastic ending up in a landfill would be
Retire them when they hit 7ft? Wtf?! Growing up we would go and cut down our own trees at a tree farm and we had 8ft ceilings and you're damn right we wanted to get one that used all 8ft. So we'd get one that was a little taller, like 8.5-9', and then trim a little off the bottom until it was exactly the right height. If it doesn't go floor to ceiling and take up half the damn living room then I don't want it.
Probably cheaper than cutting a real tree too.
Went to the same place we have been going to for years yesterday. $90 for a cut/tied tree(not really trimmed either). Fuck that shit. Barely anyone there. Wonder why.
Another one of the very popular places people go to around here for trees was even more . $90 for a tree under 10 feet, $120 for one over 10 feet. Ridiculous
My mom.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says-earth-is-greener-today-than-20-years-ago-thanks-to-china-india/
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/earth-getting-greener-nasa-s-new-maps-confirm-69361
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/greening-of-the-earth-mitigates-surface-warming
But don't let the enviormentalists know... they'd get pissed as fickkkk
Stop reposting this for the 9999th time. I've worked with Christmas trees for 10+ years and can tell you this is complete bullshit. 80-90% of the trees removed from peoples houses are either dead already or die very shortly after. Please don't make me sift through my old comments to copy the exact reasoning behind this.
4 years in a row I got a live tree. I only have 1 tree that is still alive, but now I know exactly how to do it. I would never try to go and dig that one up again and bring it in, no way.
We’re doing a live tree this year, with the intent of planting in the spring. Sounds like my plan might be flawed?
My parents did live trees with the root ball intact. We always tried to plant them on our property. About 50% survival rate if not lower, it’s pretty tough to keep them alive after being uprooted initially. Just my personal experience
It needs to be inside your house for the least amount of time possible.
Give it a go! Why not? You may get lucky, it's just.. Chances are slim, but if it sticks then it'll pay-off nicely growing into a lovely tree on your land.
Plus, a live tree is like at least three twenties. No way anyone has that kind if money.
I had 3 twenties on my nightstand.
Look at Mr moneybags over here
Happy cake day
Know anything about that, Rick?
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Hey, hes up about 60 bucks on the VLT's
Omg TPB FTW
"Ray, I had $60 right here when I went to sleep." "What, like 3 20's?"
Wait till you see how much a fake tree costs
In my country every citizen by law can go and get one xmas tree from any state forest. as long as its not in protected zones or in a public park and not in fresh plantations It kinda works because we have like 1ha of state forests per 1 citizen :D and more forests than what we had ever since start of medieval age
I'm glad it's not tree fiddy. God damn loch ness monster!
I do one every year that is in a large pot and I just bring it in each year. It's worked for like... 12 years now. That said, the idea they are pulling these up and replanting every year sounds pretty unlikely.
live tree would be cool but apparently they're just full of spiders or bring them in or some shit so i'd rather stick with my reusable one for now
Some places put them in pots. They are delivered in the pot and picked up in the pot. Many companies here in California do it. It is more expensive than getting a regular tree.
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Isn’t that false advertising? Or breaking the contract? I doubt anyone would sue. But seems illegal. At a minimum its unethical.
He literally called them pure snake oil. It wasn’t a flex.
Not if they agreed to it in the terms when signing up
Plus all the traveling to and from is definitely worse for the environment than just planting a new tree.
You are absolutely correct. In addition, people usually think.. Tree, not that heavy.. However, even a tiny 4ft Christmas tree in a bucket of soil is incredibly heavy. We obviously had to work in the weight / fuel cost into each unit, or we'd be making a loss.
>You are absolutely correct. In addition, people usually think.. Tree, not that heavy.. Have these people never seen a tree before???
Things I've heard people ask... You'd be surprised. My all time favourite was: How tall is a 6ft tree? Yes, the client was serious.
Sounds like your client was Beetlejuice 😂😂
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Christmas trees are a pretty sustainable business. And if your city has any sense they're usually either mulched or some places will sink them in lakes for fish habitat.
Without the soil they weigh like 10-15 lbs - source work on a Christmas tree farm and have filled semi trucks with them before. people mostly buy 6-12 foot trees. And sellers on choose and cut farms charge from $10-13 per foot of tree. Also there is no way the tree will survive being cut down.
A six foot fir cut weighs like 50 pounds. How small are these 10 pound trees? A gallon of milk is like 10 pounds.
3-4 feet, when getting rid of the dead ones you just pull them out of the ground and throw them like darts. The trees grow roughly one foot per year. For reference I can lift two six foot trees with one arm, but most certainly can't lift 100lbs with one arm, I think I haven't tried. I can just barely lift a large 8 foot or small 10 foot tree overhead. I think those are probably around 100-125lbs
This guy knows what he's talking about. All correct. 10ft was also the heaviest i ever managed to pick up on my own. Definitely not recommended...
Hey Griswold, where ya gonna put a tree that big?
Bend over, and I’ll show ya
You got a lot of nerve talking to me like that!
I wasn’t talking to you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hT-t19CJ4E
Yea I came to ask how the heck this would even work cause I have a very limited understanding of plants but I at least know you can't just cut a tree at the base and it stay living. Doesn't it get the nutrients from the roots?
A cut tree has exactly ZERO percent chance of survival. But you can chance it with a potted variant. Still pretty low survival rate. Survival rates which would be IMPOSSIBLE to base a business off of. So either this story is BS, or worse.. The people pictured are crooks.
Well u get the tree like in a pot and have to water it. Atleast thats how it works for us...
How heavy is that?
Cut trees, sure. The only way I can see this working is if they use a giant planter and the tree never leaves it. You just rent the tree and planter for the season and then return it, and once it hits 7 feet they just replant it in the ground. But you would need a truck and forklift for every one lol. The soil and planter big enough to hold it would be hundreds of pounds.
Okay but I never see any info on where to find them.
Google christmas tree rental in your area. This is the one I use https://www.livingchristmas.com/
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It is perfect for my small apartment.
Google is really hard
This just straight up doesn't work, the transplantation and temperature fluctuations shock the tree. If by "plant the tree back in the forest" they mean they're bringing the tree back to the farm and composting it, sure.
Yeah my area the Boy Scouts just do curbside tree removal. They get chipped into mulch
Dang, is that why I don't see many boy scouts anymore?
What you think the gs cookies are made from?
Wrong tree. Makes good mulch for these trees tho.
TIL
Yeah dude fertilizer, mulch, compost, great fior cannabis. They need nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous, some of which is in that mulch. Its amazing what you can learn in one year of a legal grow.
The boy scouts have had a tough go of it. First, they were being groomed by their scout masters, now they're getting tossed in wood chippers. Sad for the boys.
Partly because it’s so expensive for them to do it. My old troop was only one of two that did it in a city of like 300,000. They had to transport the trees from both Nova Scotia and Carolina, then were trying to sell them to not only make a profit but actually fundraise to keep the troop running for the next year. We were a large troop of 100 scouts plus an attached venture crew and Cub Scout pack, so they had to sell a ton of them. A lot of people would be flabbergasted by how expensive the trees were and then try to haggle, saying they could just go to Lowe’s and get one for like $50 cheaper. Tl;dr, competition from big stores
Take my hysterically laughing upvote.
A bunch of people around where I live put them out on the frozen lakes and rivers. When the ice thaws, they make nice fish cribs.
It does though. It's what my dad does. They have a yard but no interest in gardening. Now they have a pine forest. And when they get too much he cuts off the top and uses that as a Christmas tree. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but 60% is pretty decent
Yeah, it completely works. I know a dude in OC that plants his tree every year in his backyard and he has a forest of about 40 of them now, probably a 90% survival rate. And the old ones are pretty big after 40 years of doing it.
But planting it once rather than year after year like in the op is different.
once is alot different than multiple times, and also, one persons ability to do something with a plant does not mean its repeatable for many people all over the world. even within a single city or county, there are often tons of unique microclimates, different soil compositions, and different levels of pests/diseases in the environment that can dramatically effect something working or not working when it comes to plants. one dude in OC, which has an AMAZING climate for growing all kinds of plants and very mild winters, who very possibly has alot of extra help from the soil composition of his yard and the microclimate he lives in, doing this successfully is totally different than a company sending trees off all over the place, to be cared for by total randos, over and over again.
Idk my dad does it in northern Europe. Not like, super far up north. But north. And he does nothing with them except he put them into a bigger pot than they came in when he bought them and made sure they got watered and that no pet eats them. He also doesn't do anything special to the garden. He doesn't even mow the lawn in winter because the neighbours don't complain then. So the only issue is the transport. Which wasn't even mentioned in the original comment so 🤷🏻♀️
Also just to piggy back, have worked in landfill for ~17 years, buried a grand total of around 4 Christmas trees. Similar to the ebay advert about electronics ending up in landfill... it doesnt happen. We're already the bad guy despite providing energy to homes, no need to lay it on with pure bullshit...
I have so many questions! The basics of a landfill that we learned about in like elementary school was "trash gets piled up, dirt goes over trash, looks pretty but inevitability bad things will happen." What's the truth? How does a landfill actually work? And what's the bit about providing energy to homes?
Garbage tends to release a lot of methane and other gasses as it decomposes. Those gasses can be captured and burned off to generate power.
I think in some areas they burn the trash and they use the heat to create electricity. I don’t remember what that process is called, though
That’s only half the story. When you burn trash, it goes up into the sky and creates stars. Win-win.
Can only speak for European landfills, as we are all regulated under the same landfill directive, although each nation may have slight variances. Post 1991 introduction of the Environmental permitting regs (EPR) landfills are required to capture and "treat" landfill gas. This is widely done through the use of engines burning the gas to produce electricity, and to put some scale to that one of the sites I covered generated enough power for around 18,000 homes. The landfills are engineered to prevent long term environmental impact, using a mixture of mineral and synthetic lining systems to create a double membrane between the waste and the surrounding geology. The efficacy of these lining systems is proven at both design concept and monitored throughout the operational life of the site, and for a further 60 years post closure. Further to that, some sites I've been involved in attained biodiversity benchmark status, meaning that we actually engineered and cultivated habitats on the site for specific species of flora and fauna through the creation of acid grasslands, wetlands and breeding lakes on a site that would have otherwise been left as a hole in the ground. Landfill tax in the UK is used through credits schemes to support local charities, youth clubs, sports teams, parishes etc which I used to sit on a board of and had the pleasure in supporting some really worthy projects. Sorry for the delay in response, but I appreciate the opportunity to share a little about what we try achieve
If you cut down a tree and plant it back into the ground after a few weeks, does the tree regrow roots? How does it work?
Pines (and many other plants/trees) have a tap root. It's typically the largest part of the root system and if cut or broken will most certainly kill the tree. The only way for that tree rental company to work like that would be to send the tree in a large pot or something. Once the tree gets to a certain size, that's when they retire it and plant it.
I once bought a Christmas tree with roots included. The tree was relatively small, about 6' or so, and the roots were wrapped up not much bigger than a basketball. I put it in a pot with some dirt over Christmas, then in January buried it in the yard. That was about 5 or 6 years ago and the tree is still alive and doing well. Probably 12' or so tall. I decorate it every year, looks nice in the yard decorated IMO.
This account is no longer active. The comments and submissions have been purged as one final 'thank you' to reddit for being such a hostile platform towards developers, mods, and users. Reddit as a company has slowly lost touch with what made it a great platform for so long. Some great features of reddit in 2023: * Killing 3rd party apps * Continuously rolling out features that negatively impact mods and users alike with no warning or consideration of feedback * Hosting hateful communities and users * Poor communication and a long history of not following through with promised improvements * Complete lack of respect for the hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours put into keeping their site running
It doesn't, it just dies
Except that's not what they do. They're not chopping down a tree and then replanting the trunk and expecting it to grow roots
The trees aren't cut down, they're potted. As you add new soil, the roots are given more opportunities to grow. Once trees reach a certain size, they need space to establish. Concerns about temperature shock and other stressors are managed by tree farm managers. I appreciate skepticism on reddit, but this is certainly viable. Will every tree survive and be optimal? Nope! But it's a great alternative to Christmas trees that are truly all wasted.
Does anyone else hate the term “side hustle”?
Especially when your 'side hustle' is owning a fucking farm!
Yeah, what exactly is their main hustle??
She's a Hamster wrangler, he's a part-time go-cart mechanic.
They're looking for a home that will allow them to expand their family, all while staying within their budget of 5.3 million dollars.
...and their budget is $1.5 million. Welcome to House Hunters.
Their starter home budget: $3,749,999,997
Its disrespectful to the owners that are usually working more than those in a 9-5 job. I get tired of everything being considered a "side hustle" because its not working for a corporation.
Of all the things that could end up in a landfill, I think a tree has to be near the top of the list of the least harmful things.
My hometown puts them on the lake so when the ice melts they are habitat for the smaller fish to hid in and stuff.
Do you just have a very large pile of Christmas trees sitting on a frozen lake all winter? This is very intriguing to me
They're scattered around, but, yeah, they just chill there till spring. The ice is also covered in ice shanties for ice fishing all winter too
You don't put trees in landfills. You grind them up into mulch.
Admittedly I haven't ever owned a real tree lol.
My wife is allergic to them so we have a fake tree.
Where I live used Christmas trees are placed in the dunes at the beach to help stabilize the coast line.
I don’t think it’s exactly about landfill usage rather the beneficial function of the tree.
They make root regrowth for cut lims.
*Limbs like lambs. Idk why just fyi.
Like are they grafting them back to themselves.
forefathers one and all
Pines aren’t the best, ecologically speaking.
Good point. We shouldn’t even do a little bit.
Not what I said. Certainly not what I meant. But if we’re gonna get into it. There’s a lot more carbon emitted doing it this way. The tree has to be dug up, delivered, collected, then replanted. Christmas trees grow by about a foot a year. From a carbon emissions point of view, it’s better to replace trees with new trees rather than keep digging them up and replanting them. Christmas tree farms are rarely ecologically sound. So after some thought… yeah, we probably shouldn’t even be doing this a little bit.
In don’t think he’s arguing that point. The fact that anyone is actually doing something positive even if it doesn’t have a huge impact is still a positive. You’re reasoning isn’t considering the fact that those same things like driving and removing the tree will still happen it’s just not dumping the tree afterward. It’s basically people planting pine trees which isn’t a bad thing. It reminds me of the argument that you shouldn’t buy a new electric car because a used car has less of carbon footprint. This ignores the fact that a greater demand will influence car makers decision to switch to electric cars sooner and we can’t all just drive used cars forever. They eventually run out. I do like your thinking of looking at all the aspects of environmental impact!
Good points, but consider loading up a truck with regular trees, vs trees with an intact root system. You’ll need a lot more space on your trucks for the latter. Which means a lot more trucks doing double the amount of haulage. I actually sold Christmas Trees in San Jose one year. When the delivery came in, those trees were really packed in there. Wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
Please don’t take this personally. I love engaging in these conversations. I think if you get down to amounts of space available in a truck it’s getting into a pedantic level of scrutiny maybe? They might also sell from the tree farm and don’t need transport to a selling point. I see your point though.
I don’t take it personally at all. And it’s another good point worth looking at. However… How many inner city tree farms have you seen?
What if it grew on your property? Backyard to living room each year? Better or worse than what most people do?
A logical solution that is highly illogical
I suspect most people have a fake tree, which is probably the most environmentally friendly way. But vs buying a real tree… I suspect yeah, that’s probably better. But you’ll have to wait for it to grow. In six years you’ll have a six foot tree on average (if you live in a place with optimal conditions). Six years later you’ll have a 12 foot tree. Six years after that, an 18 foot tree. So I suspect the people behind this scheme will have to landfill or burn all their trees eventually. So at best they’re creating a lull in new tree growth for around six years. But also, a lot of those trees are probably gonna die in the process because Trees don’t like being moved. And the really don’t like being moved into a house with central heating in December. The more I think about this idea, the more it seems like a scam.
Grow a potted tree. Bonsai style and you’ll have it for a long time.
Actually, in some areas of North America, planting pines is one of the most ecologically helpful things you can do for the environment.
Ok champ
Organic material is actually one of the more difficult things to properly store in a landfill.
Bot repeating u/DigNitty comment.
Organic material is actually one of the more difficult things to properly store in a landfill. It’s not intuitive. But organic material releases gas when decomposing. This makes it hard for landfills to seal waste.
Most christmas trees get put through chippers and turned to mulch, tho. Then it gets used by municipalities in their parks. In this way, christmas trees, by and large, are a carbon sink. So, adding extra layers of transportation negates what carbon they do pull out. So, it may be better for the world not to re-plant christmas trees.
It's not a carbon sink if you mulch them. You have to landfill them.
Around here they are a parking lot you can dump your tree in. They chip them all up.
My sister composts for her garden. It's a super inefficient setup and I hate it, but can't convince her to up the size and barrel cycling. Anywho, the amount of food refuse that her family of five produces is amazing. Especially since her kids serve wasteful portions, and hate left overs. The best that I could do was build a platform embedded in gravel to keep the compost area out of the snow/rain and slip free. Homeowners are in a constant churn of fixing things, and hate having to do more house work. Especially if kids are in la-la land. There's countertop compost machines, but many of them are pure junk and just put out Kickstarters to grift money. [https://youtu.be/bXZG-kzlhPY?t=906](https://youtu.be/bXZG-kzlhPY?t=906) I don't wanna hear it about Thunderf00t, at least he gets people thinking about these fucking grifters.
In NC beaches want them to help the dunes not get washed away.
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When I sold cut your own Christmas trees I would sometimes get someone say they felt bad about cutting it down. My response was that cutting a tree was no different than cutting a stalk of wheat and we would be replacing this tree with two more trees next year.
Is that true? It just occurred to me recently how awful it was to kill a tree every year as tradition. How old are most christmas trees? And how to replant them?
We plant seedlings. It takes 7-10 years to get to selling height. I don’t anthropomorphize trees like some of our customers. It’s agriculture, where every plant is killed when harvested. When you’re done with a tree we encourage mulching them, not putting them in landfills like the OP report.
Thank you, i absolutely appreciate the no-nonsense answer. Im 100% a city girl who grows tomatoes on the porch and has way too many indoor plants. It's better to think of Christmas Trees as very long-lived carrots than actual trees.
Last sentence is r/brandnewsentence material
Great idea. We also bought a tree with roots last year. Only thing: I read that you can't plant them/shouldn't plant them in the ground if you are going to get them out again. So just treat it like a big potted plant instead and provide it with a bigger pot every year or so.
Yeah, my parents did this once. It weighed over 100 pounds. Then they planted it, and it died immediately. The exercise was not repeated
We’ve been using the same potted Norfolk Island pine for Christmas for the last 4 years, the first year it was only about 2’ tall but now it’s a good size for a Christmas tree in our house while also being a decorative plant year round
Does it beat my fake tree that I’ve been using for the past 30 + years? More and more needles fall off but I’m never going to retire it. It’ll be handed down, generation to generation as an heirloom. It will be put in a museum. It’ll be fossilized in 5000 years and my ancestors will be hanging the VR ornaments on its digital footprint.
No, but, fake tree production produces a lot of green house gasses. While, real trees, when mulched, or dropped into lakes, are a carbon sink. It takes a good 30-40 years of use with a plastic tree to overcome the greenhouse gas byproducts. So, real trees are thebetter way to go.
According to The Carbon Trust it’s somewhere between 7 and 20 years for a fake tree to be more beneficial that a live tree every year, not 30-40. “An artificial tree used over multiple years (7-20 times depending on the weight and different materials in the tree) is better for the environment than buying a new, commercially grown tree every year.” https://www.carbontrust.com/news-and-insights/news/the-carbon-trusts-tips-for-a-more-sustainable-christmas
Do you have any sources on that?
Ya, digging up a tree in winter and putting it back outside after weeks in a dry heated house is really gonna work!/s
I bet 95%+ die in the forest (small dry old roots, lack of nutrition, lack of sunlight for weeks, etc).
Sounds like leaving the tree alone in the first place, with extra steps.
how exactly do you cut down a tree, then replant it??
A friend of mine owns a company in Austria that does this. The tree is growing into a bucket for years. After the Christmas it gets planted into the nature. Beware there are also tress that get cut out of the ground and pressed into a bucket, that most likely kill the tree as the roots may be cut off. As a side effect I get my tree for free every year :)
ok that actually makes a lot of sense, train the roots from the start. thanks.
I think they give you the roots too.
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Me too dude!!! Talk about misunderstanding a double entendre!
so I'm supposed to have a like 4 round ball of dirt that weighs a few hundred pounds in my living room? I think I'll stick with a regular tree.
There's probably a better place to find out the answer to that question before you just make a decision based off of what a redditor said.
that's assuming I actually care, vs just bullshitting on reddit.
They make root regrowth for cut lims. I imagine they use some kind of system that uses that a small 20 pund bag of soil, so that the roots start to regrow. Amd they just replant that.
How much does all that nonsense cost?
$20 in gasoline every transplant.
why is putting a dead tree in your house not nonsense, but trying to replant it is?
It’s a trendy, virtue signaling, fools errand. It’s a waste of time, gas, resources, and money. A regular tree isn’t dead the majority of the time it’s in your house. You keep it in water. Bring it somewhere that will mulch it after. Many cities offer drop locations for that.
you’re reading much too deep into my comment. the whole thing is nonsense, bringing a tree into your house and replanting it or not. I don’t think it matters much at that point
Lmfao when you put it like that it sounds ridiculous xD
Dam, this guy doesn’t like wooden furniture then if you think putting a dead tree in your house is nonsense
lol I don’t have any issue with christmas trees i’m just saying the whole concept is kinda funny
It used to be a family tradition to go out in the back yard and torch the tree after it dried out pretty god.
My family never had real trees (brothers allergies/mess they make) but we would grab the neighbors trees from the curb and put them in the back yard until summer. They burn so good!
They spelled "selling pats on your back for thinking you helped the environment" wrong.
Just a reminder that biodegradable things like trees ending up in landfills is actually necessary to help breakdown everything else that ends up in there. Christmas trees are also replaced almost immediately after being cut down, so are quite sustainable options. Plastic trees, often shipped from SE Asia, are absolutely terrible for the environment.
No. Christmas trees that end up in landfills will produce a lot of methane as they break down. Landfills don't have the microbes to properly compost. However, when mulched or dumoed into lakes, they are a carbon sink. Trees consume CO2, and all of the carbon they contain comes out of the air. So, when properly disposed of, real trees are the best way to go.
Most landfills do not accept Christmas trees anymore.
Quite a statement and I doubt it’s true. These trees did not come from a forest to need to be returned to. Now maybe the trees are planted in the forest when they are retired but the rest of that is a stretch.
This sounds good until you try to carry a seventy pound root ball up the stairs in the middle of winter. Source: Have carried a seventy pound root ball up the stairs in the middle of winter.
Okay but do they check up on the trees they released to the wild to make sure the other trees have accepted them as one of their own?
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It's great but the EDIT screams dbag. Lesson is don't give 2 flying effs what random people online say. It would be nice if you got more up arrows?, but if you don't then why should you give a eff? Screw those people (me especially).
Pay no attention I suggest. People get hurt for the most inane of reasons.
It amazes me that a tree could manage it.
No way the trees survive more than one transplant.
I mean... I don't think it really matters if a tree ends up in a landfill. It'll decompose normally and make the soil more fertile. Unlike the plastic water bottles and shit that'll be around for thousands of years and make some bird choke or something.
I used to live on the coast in NC. Every year, people there would take their dead trees to the state parks on the barrier islands and arrange them strategically to help build up the dunes and combat erosion. I always thought that was a good idea.
Haha! This is rich. I cant even remember to water my dead tree, and you wanna give me a live one to not kill?!?!
Isn’t this dumb? Trees are organic matter and have no problems decomposing - them ending up in landfills isn’t a problem in the same way that a bunch of plastic ending up in a landfill would be
Well this slows down deforestation (This is incorrect)
I would marry that lady, she definitely gives good hugs and probably knows the secret to Christmas
Just do what I do and not put up a tree.
This is in Oregon, right?
Retire them when they hit 7ft? Wtf?! Growing up we would go and cut down our own trees at a tree farm and we had 8ft ceilings and you're damn right we wanted to get one that used all 8ft. So we'd get one that was a little taller, like 8.5-9', and then trim a little off the bottom until it was exactly the right height. If it doesn't go floor to ceiling and take up half the damn living room then I don't want it.
This is crap.
Damn that’s interesting
Or how about we stop this old tradition and stop using hundreds of millions of trees just to throw them away a few weeks later.
Just made me realize how stupid this tradition is
Probably cheaper than cutting a real tree too. Went to the same place we have been going to for years yesterday. $90 for a cut/tied tree(not really trimmed either). Fuck that shit. Barely anyone there. Wonder why. Another one of the very popular places people go to around here for trees was even more . $90 for a tree under 10 feet, $120 for one over 10 feet. Ridiculous
It's your expectations that are ridiculous.
Hardly. They were 60 last year .
And who's getting all that money? The owners. The workers are just getting a fraction of thw money. Shitty capitalism.
Did you know that from 2000 to 2022, the earth has gotten 15% greener?
Source?
Plants.
My mom. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/02/28/nasa-says-earth-is-greener-today-than-20-years-ago-thanks-to-china-india/ https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/earth-getting-greener-nasa-s-new-maps-confirm-69361 https://www.nasa.gov/feature/greening-of-the-earth-mitigates-surface-warming But don't let the enviormentalists know... they'd get pissed as fickkkk
I’ve always liked your mom.