Misguided Environmentalism

[imec]

I'm all for treating the planet a little more kinder, but some ideas are just plain dumb.

The City of Winnipeg runs a program where residents are invited to drop of their Christmas tree at a "tree recycling centre" where the tree will be ground into tiny chips and offered for free for use as mulch etc.

Now it seems to me that the biodegradable tree would be better off left at the curb with the rest of the landfill bound garbage rather than hauled individually by fossil fuel burning vehicles to an out of the way location where it will then be transformed to tiny pieces by another fossil fuel burning machine, maybe picked up or maybe hauled away again by more fossil fuel burning vehicles. But that's just me...

[Deleted]

Yes, Paris has lots of dropoff points for Christmas trees, and they even count the number of trees that were deposited, but I really question the utility of it all. I'm sure there are more potato peels in a day of Parisian garbage than Christmas trees in a couple of weeks, so it all seems like a foolish PR stunt to me.

[Deleted]

We have the same sort of program here, imec. But we usually just put our old Christmas tree where we got it from, somewhere in the woods.

[Deleted]

One of the most successful uses for discarded Christmas trees is to pile them up on beaches to help deal with erosion. For as long as I remember that is what people did up on Long Island almost ritually every January 6th. The same concept is implemented here.
The shredding idea, while it sounds noble, is indeed dumb.And,it's use as mulch,I don't know that I would care for all that tinsel and flocking crap in my garden...

[lagatta]

casimira, that is a really good idea. I've been mulling this, don't really know the footprint of each option. Obviously trees aren't harmful in landfill - a lot of the problem with landfill is either toxins that entail very costly remediation later on, or household waste that doesn't break down in plastic bags.

[bixaorellana]

Also mulling here. I'm not at all sure that putting the trees in landfill would use significantly less energy. Remember that all landfill areas are full of earth movers and other machines to compact and smooth the area. If Winnipeg gets residents to do the dropping off and presumably the picking up of the finished mulch, then the city is mostly just running the chipper. And yes, that's a bunch of individual fuel-burning vehicles going to and fro, but thus reducing costs to the city. Also, any municipality with lots of newer subdivisions means lots of area with scraped topsoil and sometimes imported "fill". Raising awareness about the benefits of mulching by engaging citizens in reusing something they'd ordinarily discard is probably a good thing.

I'm not saying I'm right about this, but only that I can understand what Winnipeg might have been thinking in creating such a program.

[Deleted]

I think that the main reason for the disposal sites in Paris is that everybody was tired of seeing Christmas trees abandoned on the sidewalk. Nevertheless, one still sees plenty of them starting from December 26th until about January 10th, and then you see the odd orphan lying on the sidewalk sometimes as late as March or April.

[Deleted]

Might that be because people don't take their trees down until much later than "usual".? (For some reason I have it in my head that all Christmas stuff come down by or on January 6th,the Epiphany) I have a friend in NY who doesn't take her tree down until April (she is tad eccentric to begin with and, I shudder when I think of the fire hazard she is creating!)

I may have been a bit harsh in my earlier post about the city of Winnipeg's effort,it does seem a little over the top,but,the intentions in the long run somehow more beneficial than I was willing to acknowledge initially.So,maybe not so much dumb,but as Imec suggests,"misguided".

[Deleted]

I glanced up at a window tonight and saw a Christmas tree in full regalia with twinkling lights. Since I pass that building every evening, now I will feel compelled to check if it is still there every day.

[lagatta]

They have money to burn on electricity, eh? If that is a real tree, it is becoming a fire hazard.

Chinese and Vietnamese restgaurants often seem to leave Christmas lights and stuff up all year, but no trees.

[auntieannie]

My understanding is that plants (christmas trees, other trees, grass, plant-based kitchen refuse) shouldn't be put into landfill as it creates gas as it decomposes. Unless we find a way to capture that natural gas and use it, obviously.? Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

[komsomol]

Since lots of houseplants and things like potted blooming azaleas or poinsettias are not meant to go on living after a month or so, they should have a place to collect those items. And maybe a place behind curtains to hide the ugly bald ficuses and deformed droopy rubber trees.

[Deleted]

I know they're pretty, but those "temporary" plants shouldn't even exist, as far as I am concerned. In Europe, they are mostly grown in huge warehouses in the Netherlands under sunlights that are on about 18 hours a day. Once they leave that environment, there is no way that they can survive in normal sunlight for a normal number of hours, even though they try to live for awhile until we overwater and overfertilize them and they finally commit suicide.

One documentary I saw about the industry said that you were supposed to keep them a maximum of 3-4 months and then just throw them away and buy new ones. Apparently that is a normal part of life in Scandinavia (and maybe Canada?), because there is no way that these plants of tropical origin are ever going to get proper conditions in such places. In more southern countries, we try to flog them back to life with about a 20% success rate.

This industry is so wasteful. Why can't an environmentally responsible company find indoor plants that can really survive in a northern European environment? All of this stuff from the Amazon rain forest is doomed.

[onlymark]

And another thing - do you know where your flowers come from that you give out to your wife, on special occasions etc?
Not exactly environmentally friendly when you have to bring them from Kenya via Holland, is it?
This is an old article but it's still relevant today.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1820515.stm

[bixaorellana]

True, Mark. Then there is balancing the carbon footprint of those jet-setting flowers against the benefits to the workers in Kenya, if the article is to be believed.

Did you see these earlier discussions touching on the same thing?

anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ecology&thread=2437&page=1#48286

anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=africa&thread=2280&page=1#51448

[onlymark]

I'll look soon, however, before I do, I do wonder, just taking your sentence above about balancing, how much environmental destruction balances how much benefit.

[bixaorellana]

It's a quandary. And besides the question about trade-offs between destruction and benefit, there are the sneaky hidden issues of who is really benefiting. Yes, the strip mine or the smelter or logging company comes in and gives everybody in the area a job with medical coverage, etc. But this creates a situation where the populace is in thrall to the exploitive outsiders, who will merrily reap all they can while devastating the land and eventually leaving their workers unemployed, possibly sick, and trapped because everything was dependent on a single industry.

[lagatta]

The houseplants I have have lived for years. Some are as old as my cat Renzo (14 years).

Most duds were gifts. I was unable to keep a certain bonzai tree alive, but I think it was a mass production bonzai, or perhaps I was ill-prepared for it. I'm still sad about that, as usually I take very good care of my plants.

Remember that while our winters are as hard as Scandinavian ones (and usually harder than Danish ones) we are VERY far south from there. I'm considerably south of you - about Lyon, I think or Bordeaux. There is enough sunlight to keep them living in the wintertime, as long as we don't overheat our houses, and I'm congenitally cheap. (Put on another sweater!)

[komsomol]

It's probably not environmentally sound to make too much effort to keep sick plants alive either.

[lagatta]

Well, that is also true for humans...

There is a problem here, not really "misguided", but dreadful organisation. Most dwellings use open recycling bins - rectangular green plastic boxes (yes, they are recycled plastic). The recycling workers sweep along, and throw the contents in big containers that open up on either side of their trucks. Inevitably, a lot of wine bottles and jars fall out and break right beside the curbside. They puncture more than a few bicycle and even car tires.

Larger blocks of flats and office buildings have wheeled, covered bins that are similar to the rubbish bins used in Paris, for those of you more familiar with Paris.

It would be better to have bins on the streets (in Amsterdam, at least, most of these is below ground) but I suppose that would require more public awareness as people actually have to carry their recycling a (very short) distance.

They are trying to develop a better green box. Other than the dangerous glass shards, recycling day also means paper and lightweight rubbish blowing about in the wind.

[Deleted]

I guess this is the thread for this.
As most of you know,I live in a semi tropical environment and try to eek out a living as a horticulturist.
One of my biggest challenges in dealing with clients is how to dispose of what is known as Biomass,which is basically,chopped down foliage,leaves,branches,twigs.All organic plant matter.
The vast majority of people want this stuff bagged up,put out on the street to be disposed of by the city sanitation crew where it is taken to be put in some landfill somewhere.
Very few of my clients recycle or compost despite much encouragement.
So,there is a mass effort underfoot,which I am involved with to some degree,to haul this "stuff' off to vacant,abandoned lots around the city,and just let it break down and replenish the soil.
Does anyone know what is done in other places around to deal with biomass and have any suggestions to offer?


I'm talking about ten times the size of this...all in plastic bags,going to the landfill.

[bjd]

Here where I live, they used to collect garden stuff with regular garbage. Then, a few years ago, it was collected separately and much less often. As far as I could tell, the calendar for green pick-up was imagined by someone living in an apartment in the city because collection stopped well before all the leaves had fallen off the trees. Most gardens here are much too small to just leave everything to rot.
Now, they don't pick up any more, but we have to take the bio-mass stuff to the dump. I put grass cuttings in a composter, but branches, etc have to be driven to the dump. So, instead of a big truck going around from time to time, everyone has to go separately in their car. And the old ladies with gardens and no cars have to pay someone to do it -- along with paying the regular pick-up, the price of which didn't decrease, even though we have a lot less service than we used to.

All to say, in principle, it doesn't go into landfill any more.

[Deleted]

Back to the topic of the OP re; the Christmas trees...here are a couple of pictures taken last week,of discarded Christmas trees placed at the foot of the ocean dunes in order to help prevent erosion. The trees are all up and down the beach placed in the same manner.

[myrt]

That is a very good idea! The East Anglian coast is disappearing into the sea at a rate of knots but if anyone suggested that as a good use of Christmas trees here it would be unacceptable - FAR too untidy! All the second home owners would howl at the spoiling of the view on their occasional winter beach walks..(she said nastily) .
I guess that it is ultimately using less fossil fuel for authorities to go around collecting trees etc for recycling than lots of individual cars making single trips to recycling plants? In my part of the UK that sort of plant material is picked up by the local council and composted and resold as mulches etc. There were attempts to establish compost bins at the local sites but people put lots of inappropriate stuff in them because they were too lazy to sort it themselves.

A thought about Christmas and environmentalism - WHY don't they make all those glittery tree decorations biodegradable? In fact why isn't all packaging made out of biodegradable material? It's one of those 'bleedin' obvious' things that just never happens....when I am Empress of the World it's one of the first things I shall authorise..... ;D

[bixaorellana]

Here's an intelligent use of surplus Christmas trees. However, as Myrt points out above, they have to be untainted by remnants of plastic or metal decorations.

Unsold Christmas trees are turned into fish habitats in otherwise barren lakes. I really like the incentive one program offers its volunteers:
www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/us/05trees.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23