I Didn't Know That: How Christmas Trees Are Made
Travel to China to visit a factory that mass-produces the popular plastic Christmas tree for the Western market.
Transcript
The last 20 years have seen a huge increase in the Chinese economy thanks partly to Christmas Trees
The tradition of Christmas trees is believed to have begun in Germany around the 18th Century, but it was Queen Victoria who made them fashionable in Britain when she was pictured standing next to one with her family in 1846.
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This factory in Suzhou makes SHEN DAN CHO - as they call them - in all sorts of sizes. This is how they produce a two meter high version.
The branches start out as flat strips of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC to you and me.
The reels are unraveled and as they pass through rollers they're bonded and stick together.
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Then a circular blade slices through the PVC, shredding it, and making the needles.
The shredded PVC is twisted around a metal wire and then pulled through a small coil. This separates the needles and makes them nice and bushy.
These machines produce branches measuring around six meter long.
Of course a tree with branches this big isn't really very practical, so they're cut down to size by hand. They're cut this way because a mechanical cutting machine would only flatten the needles back down.
A bunch of branches are then sewn together using a polypropylene twine, and the sharp ends are bent over to stop little children hurting themselves as they hang their baubles from the tree.
Now all that's left to do is attach the branches to the metal trunks of the tree and it becomes one of the one million SHEN DAN CHO that are made here at this factory in China.
Happy Christmas!
