London’s Christmas trees get new lease of life

As Christmas decorations come down, London’s streets will be strewn with real trees waiting to be picked up by council workers, raising questions about their environmental impact and what can be done to reduce waste.

Around seven million Christmas trees in the UK end up in landfill each year, according to industry estimates.

In response, a growing number of schemes in the capital are offering more sustainable alternatives.

One option is to rent a living Christmas tree rather than buying a cut one.

At London Christmas Tree Rental, all of the trees are potted and returned after the festive season to be grown on for reuse the following year.

“Just simply, rent, water, return,” said Jonathan Mearns, the founder of the company.

“You can rent via our website, pick your dates, come along to one of the hubs to choose your tree, water it, bring it back, and then it grows on.”

The trees are available from four hubs across London, including one in Dulwich, south-east London, before being sent back to a farm once Christmas is over.

Some customers are reunited with the same tree the following year.

“Sometimes people come back and say, ‘is that really my tree?'” Mearns said.

“We get pictures and we’ll compare, and they’ll say actually it is, it’s just grown a little bit, so people love it.”

“We’ve been doing it about four years now,” one customer told BBC London.

“I just like the idea, it’s more environmentally friendly.”

A separate scheme in Peckham, south-east London, is focused on repurposing trees once they are no longer needed.

The ORNA Group works to turn discarded Christmas trees into construction materials.

Hugo Knox, one of its co-founders, said the idea grew out of first-hand experience of selling real trees.

He said: “Back in November 2019, I left my first job coming out of university.

“I rang up one of my close friends, Max. I said, look, ‘it’s Christmas, Christmas trees, shall we give it a go?'”

He said the pair initially went door-to-door in Camberwell offering trees and installations, before expanding the idea into a seasonal business.

“But from that I learned a lot about Christmas tree waste and saw all of the waste first-hand in the streets of London, and that’s what led to ORNA Group,” he said.

The environmental impact of discarded trees can be significant, according to the Carbon Trust.

It said on average a real Christmas tree produces about 3.5kg of carbon dioxide emissions, but a 2m tree sent to landfill without its roots can have a carbon footprint of 16kg.

The trust said an artificial tree used over several years creates lower emission levels overall.

Most London boroughs have schemes where trees can be recycled to reduce the number going to landfill. Information on your council’s scheme can be found at London Recycles.

At the ORNA workshop, real trees collected from homes and businesses are chipped and combined with natural binders to create new materials.

“When it arrives here, it’s mostly unprocessed,” said material scientist Caelo Dineen Vanstone, another of the start-up’s co-founders.

“The trees have come straight out of houses or businesses in different forms, but it comes here chipped up into the right consistency.”

She said the process involved cooking and modifying natural ingredients before combining them with the tree waste “to create a homogenous wet material”.

The project also works with young people to show how small actions can make a difference.

“We’re not trying to change the world quite yet,” Dineen Vanstone said.

“But it’s just about trying to make our street corner a little bit nicer and trying to do something positive rather than doing something that’s going to impact our future generations in a negative way.”