The Toxic Truth About Your Christmas Tree

This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Perhaps no single Christmas custom is more ubiquitous than putting up the Christmas tree. It originated in eastern Europe more than 500 years ago, when people decorated evergreen trees with roses or apples as symbols of Eve and the Garden of Eden. Today, that ancient tradition is a booming business that employs nearly 100,000 people, garners close to $2 billion in revenue, and harvests 25 million to 30 million natural Christmas trees annually—about 30 percent of them from the Pacific Northwest. Sales of real Christmas trees have increased

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