I am writing this post because today I went out and this is what I saw everywhere!
These pictures are all from different houses in the same block, and there were even more in that one block. Now multiply this by the number of blocks on each city in the United Estates! To me this is crazy!
I researched online about it because my first thought was "This is horrible". It turns out that most articles online support the production, cutting, selling and recycling Christmas trees. Either because of religious reasons or because of commercial reasons, no one seems to write about the "not so good" aspects of this tradition. So, in this article, I will give some thoughts that came to my mind.
Trees from the wild:
83% of all American identify themselves as Christians, that's 268.090,000 people approx.. if we think that around 1 in every 4 Christians has a Christmas tree, that's 67,022,500 Christmas trees approx. The "excuse" I find online is that from those, only 2% are cut from the wild. But! 2% is 1,340,450 trees!! it's not anything, is more than a million trees that are being cut from the wild every year. Trees that took between 6 to 10 years to grow.Christmas lessons?:
We cut trees, we use them for 2 or 3 weeks for decoration, and then we literally throw them in the garbage. Why? What is the lesson? What example are we giving to our children? and what do these pictures tell you about our society?Contamination:
98% of the Christmas trees in the US are grown by on farms specifically to be sold. Even though the water for those trees is mostly rainwater. think about the carbon dioxide generated by the transportation of those trees to the entire country, and then picking them up again from all the houses.Waste of energy:
Most articles online advice people to recycle their trees by taking them to a drop-off recycling center. Sound ok, we are recycling. But, how much energy is used in recycling 67,022,500 trees every year?
Solution:
Buy a fake tree, use it every year for 20 years, then give it to your kids for them to keep using it.My personal opinion:
Let's help each other by remembering that trees are living beings, let's try to pass that concept to our children by teaching them to respect them. We use them as products, but that doesn't give us the right to forget that they are alive. it's my opinion.
Please feel free to agree or disagree with this post, if you have a different opinion or if you agree and have other thoughts to add, I would love to hear them in the comments below.
Cheers!
Follow me on Steemit:
https://steemit.com/@alanwurman
Join the Facebook Group to boost your Steemit posts:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/178326729568343/
Me + 7 Things I Learned About Life by Making my First Short Film
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@alanwurman/me-7-things-i-learned-about-life-by-making-my-first-short-film