My wife was very excited to purchase and decorate our first Christmas tree together as husband and wife. She was so excited that she bought the tree in mid-November. We opted to buy an artificial tree over the eco-friendlier real tree or even using a rent-a-tree service, purely for cost reasons. She also wanted to put up more lights inside AND outside of our house, but we haven’t gotten to it yet because I’ve been too busy (err lazy). But hopefully, we’ll have more lights up soon. Have you put your Christmas lights yet?

There is this one house in our neighborhood that goes way beyond crazy with their decorations and lights during this time of the year. With so many light bulbs used, I always wondered how much it costs them leave their lights on throughout the night every night. But for our house, we currently have about 200 mini lights around our tree and additional 100 lights that wrap around our staircase. According to the box the light bulbs came in, each set of 100 lights consumes about 2o watt of energy. We leave the light on for about 7 hours every day from 5pm to 12am. At around 9 cents per kWh in the Baltimore area currently, it’s easy to calculate the energy consumption of my lights.

watt x time x electricity rate = total cost

(20w x 3) x (7 hours) x ($0.09/1000 watt hr) =  $0.0378 per day

That’s less than 4 cents per day! Even if we add 10 times more lights outside of our house, that’ll still only cost us less than 40 cents a day. But for that house in my neighborhood, I won’t be surprised if it costs them 100 times more than  the 40 cents. we just calculated That means I’m assuming they pay $40 per day or $1,200 a month to have their lights up. That is some serious money!

What kind of lights do you have up?

Money Green Life is a blog that is committed to delivering up-to-date tips and advice and suggestions in a form of a blog to help readers save money, save energy and become eco-friendly, and improving their lifestyle by contributing to the environment. However, sometimes, the three topics may contradict or oppose one another. A sample suggestion may help save money, but may not be very eco-friendly, or vice-versa. The post I wrote on buying an HDTV might fall into such category. There certainly are cheaper and more affordable tv’s out there, but may also be energy hoggers. Whichever the case may be, I encourage all my readers to do their own due diligence and make smart choices accordingly.

Another such topic that may fall into this category is renting a live potted Christmas tree. Although doing so may be environmentally sensible, the cost might be a little too much for an average Christmas-spirited. An alternative option may be to buy a fresh cut Christmas tree and then recycle it after its end of use. A third way to show your Christmas spirit is to buy an artificial tree and reuse it year after year after year.

Artificial vs Real Christmas Tree

People generally buy an artificial tree for 2 reasons: cost and convenience. These trees may be a little more expensive than their real counterpart, but there is only a one-time fee. They can be reused over and over again with no loss in quality. Also, the convenience factor also weighs in heavily in the decision to buy an artificial tree. No watering is required. No pine needle mess to clean after. No transporting requirements needed from the tree shop to home and vice versa (if no curbside recycling is available). However, the artificial version arguably may have a deeper environmental impact. Even though the trees produced today are made of 100% recycled materials, studies have shown that an artificial tree must be used for 20 years before it has equal environmental impact as the fresh real tree used for one year.  Despite the numbers, people are still opting to buy an artificial tree more year after year.  Of the 35-40 million trees sold across the United States last year, about 18-20 million of those were of artificial kind. Roughly about 30-40 million artificial trees were used again from the previous year.

Live Potted Christmas Tree

Opting for renting a live potted tree is not a brand new idea. This practice has been around for many years. The idea is centered upon supporting the idea of having a positive impact on the environment by being more eco-friendly with these holiday trees. Some people just cringe on the idea of cutting down any tree only to use it for a few weeks while others just refuse to buy into the idea of purchasing an artificial tree. Basically with these Christmas tree rental programs, you order a tree of your choice, have it delivered to your home, and after 3 weeks or so, you ship it back to have the tree replanted. You can even choose the same tree year after year if you love it so much. However, this program can be costly and only available to the local area near the tree farm.

Tree Renting Services, Locally

I searched around and found the following areas that offer tree renting services:

Portland, Oregon : The Original Living Christmas Tree Company

San Diego, California: Adopt A Christmas Tree

Los Angelos, California: The Living Christmas Tree Co.

Vancouver, Canada: Ever Grow Christmas Tree

Unfortunately, these are the only areas I could find. If you know more locations, please leave a comment.