CTV British Columbia's Chris Olsen looks at how you can get a live Christmas tree and not have to plant it after the holidays. A new drop-off/pick-up live tree delivery service might be the greenest idea yet.

Santa isn't the only one who makes deliveries at Christmas. Brad Major of Carbonsync is delivering live-cut and potted trees for the holidays.

 

"What we do is we deliver them -- or we can deliver them -- and then pick them up. And then what we do after the holidays is recycle them into bio-char," Major said.

 

"Bio-char" looks like crushed barbecue briquettes, which Brad says is a better way of disposing of your tree after Christmas.

 

"Bio-char is like charcoal, but the only difference is we add it to soil afterwards and what that does is they combine with nutrients in the soil and make them readily available for plant growth," he said.  

 

Just how Brad converts his trees into bio-char is a trade secret. He's using Climate Smart carbon accounting to prove his method is a green choice.

 

"It's better than chipping and it's better than burning because it locks the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years longer," he said.

 

Brad turned to bio-char because so many of the potted trees he placed in homes over the last three years have died.

 

"Last year our kill rate was probably 75 per cent," he said.

 

Potted trees going from outdoors to a warm home for days, or weeks, can be shocked when they're taken back outside again.

 

Arthur Loewen is a Fraser Valley grower who supplies many of Brad's trees -- potted and cut.

 

"We tell all our customers when you get it to your place cut a half inch off and get it into water immediately," Loewen said.  

 

The trees cost between $30 and $90, with $30 extra for delivery and another $30 for pickup or you can keep your potted tree for next year.

 

Brad says his customers like the idea that with a Carbonsync tree, it isn't just "thrown out" after the holidays.

 

"People love it. They love combining an environmentally friendly product with Christmas trees and we're really excited about it," he said.

 

Carbonsync isn't the only company offering potted trees for Christmas. A Burnaby company, Evergrow Christmas trees, does as well.  Both companies donate a percentage of their profits to local charities. Evergrow even donates some of the trees.

 

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Chris Olsen