Celebrate globally; buy locally

This man sells fir trees for Christmas, most of which were shipped from across Europe. His company sells over a million Christmas trees a year, most of which are Danish, the biggest exporter of Christmas trees. This customer says he was unaware of how far the trees had to be shipped, but he doesn’t mind. Environmentalists disagree, and this man says each truck that transports trees emits a lot of carbon dioxide. He and others opened the Czech’s first environmentally friendly tree market this year. The trees were all cut locally and were culled selectively from natural forests. Their sales made up less than 1% of total tree sales this season and it’ll likely take some time for the practice to catch on, but they still considered their sales a success. This business owner says he’d like there to be more locally grown trees but can’t imagine it because the imported trees are so much cheaper. One shopper says she’s worried about the environment so she reuses her artificial tree. With regard to transport, it’s clear the shorter the travel the lesser the environmental impact. For many of the Danish grown trees, they started as seeds harvested in Georgia so had to travel even farther.