A Christmas Tree for Life, not just for Christmas

A stunning new Christmas Tree has joined the sparkling Christmas Tree Festival at Chester Cathedral this year.

Conservation artist, Jacha Potgieter – who created the summer installation ‘Saving The Deep’ at the Cathedral this summer designed the tree, and it was created by blacksmith Gerallt Evans.  The tree is made up of 500 plastic bottles, collected following a public appeal for people to donate their empty bottles.

Jacha Potgieter says “Almost everyone in the UK has used a plastic bottle at some point, many would have used one today or at least in the last week.  And why wouldn’t they have done, after all it is so easy to use and fits in so well with our busy modern lives.  We seem to have lost the ability to see the destructive impact our need for instant items is having on our planet.”

The Christmas Tree Festival rounds off the Cathedral’s year of ‘waves’ – an extraordinary year of special events themed around the theme of water, which also sought to provoke thought about how we care for and abuse the world God has given us.

Consequently, this year’s festival has been dubbed The Christmas Tree-cycled Festival as participants has decorated their trees by incorporating elements of re-cycling, or items that have had a previous life – and generally considering sustainability.

Jacha continues “Our plastic use could be said to be out of control globally; two recent statistics being reported could back this thought up.  The first is that globally, humans buy a million plastic bottles per minute.  The second is that 91% of all plastic is not recycled.  Add to that the estimate that over half a trillion plastic bottles will be sold in 2020 and you can appreciate the problem.”

Once the Christmas Tree Festival comes to an end the plastic bottles from the tree will be recycled, the tree frame will be used elsewhere, all of our ‘real’ Christmas trees will also be recycled by Cheshire Waste and all decorations are recycled responsibly.

The Christmas Tree Festival – including the ‘Christmas Tree for Life’ is open daily until Sunday 5 January 2020.