Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree – grow your own in a plastic bio-bauble

Last year a British inventor created a biodegradable plastic bauble designed to contain everything needed to grow next year’s Christmas tree, whilst decorating this year’s.

Mark Champkins, Inventor in Residence at London’s Science Museum, created the “Bio Bauble” in 2012 – a Christmas bauble that contains a seedling Christmas tree, complete with soil and fertiliser inside a biodegradable transparent sphere – as part of a range of festively themed inventions.

Meant as a Christmas tree decoration, the idea is to plant the bauble in the ground after the festive period and grows one for the following year.

Mark said: “This idea came to me whilst I was admiring some transparent spheres in the Science Museum’s Challenge of Materials gallery. The plastic used for the bauble is a type which breaks down at a similar rate to which the seedling grows. The bauble also protects the seedling from the weather and animals that might eat it, until the new tree outgrows the sphere.”