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Sales Of Natural Christmas Trees Growing

Mon, 19 Dec 2011
An increasing number of Britons are shunning artificial Christmas trees in favour of natural ones, it has been revealed.

New figures from the British Christmas Tree Growers Association suggest more than 8 million natural trees will be sold this year, 2 million more than in 1999.

At the heart of Britain's Christmas tree production industry is East Anglia, which has the largest number of producers of any region in the country.

Jim Rudderham, forestry and conservation manager at the Elveden Estate near Thetford, said: "Sales have been fantastic. On Saturday we sold 1,000 trees and almost 2,000 over the weekend. Certainly, we have not seen any drop in sales numbers.

"The question of whether people are choosing artificial trees ahead of real ones seems to crop up annually, but we are not hearing that growers are suffering from low sales figures."

The estate started growing Christmas trees 40 years ago and currently supplies a wide range of trees, including spruce and fir, to 200 local authorities across the country who need trees for their town centre displays.

Mr Rudderham said the big advantage of natural trees was that they provided environmental benefits, particularly that they could be disposed of in an eco-friendly way.

"Because they are in the ground for between six and 10 years, there must be those environmental benefits both nationally and globally which you don’t get with plastic trees," he added.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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