Ethical Christmas Trees? Yes!

It’s Christmas time again and I just couldn’t wait to decorate our tree. I love to put it up on the first advent weekend, so we can enjoy all the festive decor for a whole month. It’s a special time every year as a family, and I just love glancing over the Christmas tree in our living room – cheers me up immediately.

This year, we were gifted an absolutely gorgeous, perfectly shaped, lovely and tall real Christmas tree by The Christmas Forest. The Christmas Forest has shops in London and they also deliver to your home. Which for a busy mum in the festive period is just a winner. In between school drop off and pick up, our Christmas tree was delivered and we decorated it in the evening all together. An hour and a half saved with the home delivery and ordering online. (They also do installation services – in case you’re totally lost between organising the school Christmas fair and sorting Christmas presents for every family member…)

You can choose between top quality or value real Christmas trees and even potted ones are available. They are all high grade trees. To complete the festive look, you can also buy the stand, the lights, and a Christmas wreath too.

So, back to our tree: it really does look super healthy, fresh with a great volume of fullness. Only that we had to move all the decorations to the top third of the tree as our 18 months is trying to get her little hands on every single piece of decoration she can reach. So this is how our tree looks like now:

But for me, as an ethical blogger, I needed more than a handsome Christmas tree to suggest a brand or a company to my readers.

The Christmas Tree Company stands out for two reasons for me:

1. Sustainability

The Christmas Forest was founded in 1998 on a small site in Richmond. Today with ten shops and an online shop, they are still a family business committed to providing real, sustainable Christmas trees. The trees come from sustainable Christmas tree farms where every tree cut is replaced by a new one – and they supply as much as they possible can from local tree suppliers to reduce tree miles.

2. Corporate ethics

In a partnership with Tree Aid The Christmas Forest plants a tree in the drylands of Africa for every tree you buy from from them. This project helps to provide a livelihood to some of the poorest communities on earth.

In December 2016 The Christmas Forest raised £25,138.05 for TREEAID. This donation helped villagers in Mali to grow 28,2245 trees which reduce poverty and protect the environment. Since 2006 they have donated £182,633 and planted 205,206 across Africa’s drylands.

I received this Christmas tree in exchange for my honest opinion of the service and the tree.