this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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Individual Climate Action

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Discuss actions that we can directly take as individuals to reduce environmental harm.

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Don’t get a Christmas tree. Not plastic, not real, just skip it. (slrpnk.net)
submitted 9 months ago by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/climate_action_individual@slrpnk.net
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[–] LilNaib@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They said they bring them to the landfill.

That's awful, creating tons and tons of methane - and they even have to pay for dumping. Just so stupid all around.

When I get some land I'll have a standing open invitation for select local arborists to come and dump truckloads of woodchips on my land whenever they want, for free.

is it actually less harmful to burn wood in a fireplace than to bury it at the risk that methane develops and gets released?

Yes, it's absolutely better to burn wood for heat in a modern fireplace. Doing so replaces a large amount of fossil fuels that would otherwise be burned to generate direct heat or electricity for electric heat. Although passive solar heating is by far the best method of home heating, modern fireplaces are vastly superior to anything that contribute to climate change. Since I assume your concern about fireplaces is about particulate emissions and air quality, I can happily say that modern fireplaces emit hundreds of times fewer particulates than ones from just a few decades ago. While considerable work has gone into improving fireplace design, one can't say the same about cleaning up our energy grids and climate emissions.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The tree service made this offer: they were willing to cut the wood into fireplace-sized segments and leave it in place. It would be on me to find someone who needs firewood and deal with the splitting. I didn’t find any takers. If I had, I would not have had control over whether it goes into a proper wood burning stove w/cadallitic converter. I suppose if it could be milled into pellets that would have made it easy to dump and likely to be used in a relatively clean stove.

But I guess getting it into pellets is the tricky part. If the high-mineral wood dullens cutting tools the cost of blades/bits/rasps would have to be factored in.

The tree service was unwilling to deliver the wood to a place of my choice. Either I keep the wood or if they haul it then they will only haul it to the dump (or their partnered artistic carpetener if that person wants it).