The True Cost of a Tree: New Carbon Footprint Study May Help the Environment

Planting trees can be a good way to help the environment, but planting the right type of trees may be just as important as planting them in the first place. Scientists have taken a closer look at a tree's carbon footprint in order to determine what environmental costs impact a tree's production.

"Knowing the carbon footprint of production and distribution components of field-grown trees will help nursery managers understand the environmental costs associated with their respective systems and evaluate potential system modifications to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," stated the researchers in a news release.

The carbon footprint of plants and trees is a measure of all greenhouse gases emitted during its lifetime. This is expressed in units of tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e). In order to find out this carbon footprint, the scientists created a way to capture the economic costs of component horticultural systems while conducting a "life cycle assessment" of a flowering try known as "forest pansy."

So what did they find? It turns out that the total variable costs, which included the seedling, liner, and field production phases combined, was $37.74 per marketable tree: $9.90 for labor, $21.11 for materials, and $6.73 for equipment uses. In addition, the researchers found that postharvest costs such as transportation, transplanting, takedown and disposal costs added another $33.78 in labor costs and $27.08 in equipment costs. This yielded a total cost from seedling to end-of-life of $98.60.

The findings reveal that life cycle assessment is an important tool for allowing nursery grows to understand the costs that go into producing field-grown trees. It shows that inputs costs of production are a significant portion of operations costs. Therefore, a more efficient use of these environmentally sensitive inputs not only reduce productions costs, but could also reduce environmental risks and impacts.

The findings are published in the journal HortScience.