Real vs Fake Christmas Tree: Which Is Actually Cheaper? (We Did the Maths)

Every year someone says it to me: "We'd love a real tree, but the fake one's cheaper in the long run."

Is it, though? I sat down and did the maths properly, on your wallet and on the planet. Some of it surprised even me.

1. The sticker price isn't the real price

A decent-looking 7ft artificial tree from a big Aussie retailer can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to well over a thousand. The cheap ones look cheap, and everyone knows it the second they walk in the room.

Then there's everything you don't see on the price tag: the cupboard or garage space it eats up 11 months of the year, the afternoon you lose dragging the box down, fluffing every branch and finding the lights don't work anymore, and the day it starts looking tired and you buy another one.

A real 6ft tree from us, delivered to your door and set up in your stand, is $379.95. Our 5ft starts at $329.95. No storage, no fluffing, no box.

2. Most fake trees don't last long enough to "pay themselves off"

The whole argument for a fake tree is that you keep it for years and years. But be honest: how many people do you know who are still using the same artificial tree from 2015?

Branches flatten. Built-in lights fail. Styles change. Most families move on long before the tree has earned its keep, and that matters for more than your budget.

3. The carbon maths

The UK's Carbon Trust worked out that a 2-metre artificial tree carries a footprint of around 40kg of CO2, mostly from making the plastic and shipping it across the world. A 2-metre real tree is around 16kg if it ends up in landfill, and about 3.5kg if it's chipped into mulch or replanted instead.

Their conclusion: you'd need to reuse a fake tree for at least 10 Christmases before it comes out ahead. A Canadian study by Ellipsos put that number closer to 20 years.

So if your fake tree doesn't make it to its tenth birthday, the real tree wins on carbon. And when you book our removal service, your tree gets recycled rather than dumped.

4. Plastic is forever

Most artificial trees are made from PVC and metal, and almost all of them are made overseas, a lot of them in China. When they're done, they generally can't go in your recycling bin. They go to landfill and sit there for a very, very long time.

A real tree is grown, enjoyed for a month, and then turned back into mulch for someone's garden. That's the whole life cycle.

5. Where your money ends up

This is the one I care about most. When you buy a fake tree, almost all of that money leaves the country. When you buy a real one from us, it goes to Australian growers who have farmed their land for generations, and to the young Aussies who deliver and set up your tree.

Same Christmas. Very different place for your money to land.

6. The bit you can't put a price on

A fake tree will never fill your house with the smell of fresh pine. It'll never be the thing your kids remember when they're grown up and doing Christmas for their own families. That's not on any receipt, but it's the whole point.

So, which is actually cheaper?

If you're buying a quality artificial tree, storing it, replacing it every handful of years and counting your time, a real tree delivered to your door for a few hundred dollars a year stacks up a lot better than most people think, especially once you know the money stays in Australia.

We deliver across Sydney, including the CBD and Inner West, the Eastern Suburbs, the Sutherland Shire and St George, the Northern Beaches and Lower North Shore, plus Northern Wollongong. You pick the size and the day; we bring it in, stand it up and tidy up the needles.

Choose your tree and delivery day here.

Sources: Carbon Trust (UK); Ellipsos (Montreal) life-cycle study; University of Melbourne, "Going green: are fake Christmas trees more eco-friendly than the real thing?"