It’s that time of the year again!!!!

For the third year in a row, Zero Waste California is SO excited to present our annual Alternative Christmas Tree List!

Real AND plastic Christmas trees have their pros and cons, but sometimes the most sustainable solution is making your own tree from, well, alternative materials! Here are some inspiring, beautiful, creative, doable, difficult, and just downright weird alternative Christmas trees that will hopefully motivate you AND provide a little holiday eye candy.

Check out our 12 Days of Wastefulness Video on

Zero Waste TV:

Source: Country Living.

Branch Trees:

These simple but pretty alty-trees can be made from fallen branches and sticks. We decided to go with “alty-tree” instead of alt tree. “Alt tree” sounds like white supremacist tree.

Source Dreamy Whites

Source: lisanneleeft.nl

Source: decoracion.facilisimo.com

Source: joyfullygrowingblog.com

Succulent Christmas Trees

These low-water, drought-resistant beauties could technically last forever!!! But if you don’t want to keep them in Christmas tree-form all year long, replant them in pots, your garden, or give them away as gifts!

The most cost effective way to find succulents is either at garden supple stores, home improvement stores like Home Depot, Lowes, or Ace Hardware or from friends! Note: if you buy them from stores, they will most likely be planted in plastic pots.

And if you buy them online from services like Etsy, not only are they usually double or triple the cost of buying them from local garden stores, they’re wrapped in a surplus amount of packaging to keep them protected. I usually love promoting Etsy, but when it comes to succulents, they’re overpriced and overpackaged.