A Different Kind Of 'Green' Christmas Tree

Employees at Duke's Fuqua School of Business created a holiday tree comprised of cardboard boxes with ornaments crafted from reused office products. How's that for a `green' holiday?The creators - Faculty Support assistants - positioned the tree (which is also adorned with some traditional ornaments) outside office A322 on the third floor of Fuqua's academic building."It was a lot of fun to see that in the end, it really looked like a Christmas tree," said Chulpan Khismatova, a faculty assistant who led the effort to create the display. "It was exciting to see people walk by and not realize it was just a collection of boxes."Khismatova said she came up with the idea of the tree in early November when boxes started accumulating by her office. About 20 boxes were used for the fake tree, stacked like a pyramid. Khismatova - along with Katija Waldrop, Carol Bray and Pat Massard of Faculty Support - constructed the tree by laying a plastic, green table cloth over the boxes and used found decorations and garland that had been stored in an employee break room. The only purchased material was the green table cloth, which was bought at a local Dollar Tree store.On the day before Thanksgiving, while work around the office was slow, Khismatova and her coworkers built the tree, which also features white paper dots from hole punchers as "snow.""It took a lot of imagination to put it together and a lot of trial and error," she said. In addition to creating some holiday spirit, Khismatova said coworkers will be in for a sustainable surprise when the "tree" is taken down."We put inspirational notes with Hershey's Kisses inside the boxes," she said. "When the holiday excitement is over, we'll have dismantling ceremony, and those notes and Kisses will inspire us for some other sustainable creations or good deeds."