What is sustainable floristry and why is it important?
This blog post has kindly been written for us by Hannah Boursnell. Hannah is a freelance copywriter and you can find more examples of her work on her website or see what she’s up to on instagram @hannahboursnell.
Tulips Don’t Bloom in January
What is sustainable floristry and why is it important?
Confessions of a flower addict
There is little in life that brings me more joy than a vase of cheerful flowers in the depths of winter. Come New Year’s Day, I’m itching to replace my Christmas decorations with a jug of daffodils. There really is no better reminder that lighter days are coming than a jaunty yellow daff.
But fond as I am of narcissi, I can see from my Instagram archive that by mid-January this year, I’d already moved on and was indulging in my true passion: tulips. Hang on, though… the tulip bulbs I planted in my garden last autumn only began to bloom in late April. So where on earth did my vase of over-eager spring blooms come from?
The short answer? The supermarket. The long and significantly more complicated one is that they almost certainly came from a greenhouse, forced into early growth in an artificial environment under heat lamps. There’s a good chance they came from the UK – Norfolk has tulip fields (and greenhouses) to rival anything Amsterdam has to offer – but they could easily have come from the actual Netherlands, the source of approximately 80% of the UK’s cut flowers. Or they might have come from Kenya, the second-biggest exporter of flowers to the UK. Or maybe they came to Sheffield from Kenya via the Netherlands – a roughly 4.5k-mile journey involving air, road and sea freight. This doesn’t include, of course, pit stops at UK wholesalers or supermarket distribution centres, which would add further mileage to the clock.
The truth is, I don’t know where they came from because I didn’t look at the label. I bought a bunch of supermarket flowers, wrapped in plastic, because I wanted a quick and easy mood boost. And the weird thing is, I did this while consciously trying to shop more responsibly in nearly every other area of my life.
Why are flowers my sustainability blind spot? And just how bad is my winter tulip habit?
What’s the problem?
According to Friends of the Earth, the four primary issues with most cut flowers are:
1) the carbon footprint;
2) the use of pesticides;
3) land and water use; and
4) unsustainable and unrecyclable packing.
Let’s briefly look at each of those in turn.
Carbon footprint
Cut flowers are transported using a ‘cold chain’ – essentially, one refrigerated container after another – in a complex freight system that aims to get stems from farm to shop within 24–48 hours. It’s an extremely CO2-intensive process. Refrigerated vans, for example, emit approximately 15% more carbon dioxide than a standard vehicle. In 2018, flowers exported from Columbia to the US for Valentine’s Day produced approximately 360,000 metric tons of CO2, which is roughly equivalent to the amount produced by 78,000 cars in a year.
So do we just need to reduce the number of miles our flowers have travelled? Well, not necessarily. This isn’t just about how far a bunch of roses has to fly to make it to your kitchen table, it’s also about the conditions in which those flowers were grown. Greenhouses and polytunnels in the northern hemisphere have to be heated to produce flowers out of season. Some data suggests that Kenyan-grown roses exported to the UK have a lower footprint than their closer Dutch counterparts because the warmer climate reduces the need for artificial heating.
Pesticides
The damage pesticides cause to our ecosystem – and our health – is something many of us are increasingly conscious of when we buy food or work in our own gardens. The UK’s organic food market has grown for eleven consecutive years and, since the pandemic, there’s been 25.4% growth in the sector. We’re mad for organic veg. But how often do we think about what might have been sprayed on that bunch of Mother’s Day flowers?
Because flowers are not ‘consumables’, in many countries they aren’t subject to the same safety controls as food, resulting in higher levels of use. In 2018, Greenpeace tested four Dutch bouquets and found traces of 43 different pesticides. A similar study in Belgium found more than 100 different chemicals on the flowers they sampled. And it’s not just consumers – and florists – who are potentially at risk. In 2017, researchers found that the children of floriculture workers in Ecuador experienced short-term altered brain activity after the ‘peak pesticide spraying season’ leading up to Mother’s Day.
Land and water use
Growing flowers requires water. Everyone knows that. But growing flowers on a mass scale – out of season – requires quantities of H2O that can have a devastating impact on the ecosystem. A single rose, for example, can take ten litres of water to grow. There are claims that Lake Naivasha, near Nairobi, has shrunk to half of its former size due to the extreme water use by the surrounding flower farms.
As with any intensive monoculture farming, soil degradation is also a real concern. But the use of land by commercial floriculture can cause other significant problems. A Dutch report from 2016 found that the growth of flower farming in four African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia) had led to increased food insecurity due to the reduction of land available for agriculture. Furthermore, reduced grazing lands for the Maasai community in Kenya has eroded their traditional livelihoods and semi-nomadic lifestyle.
Unsustainable and unrecyclable packaging
Here’s one that’s easy to spot. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to be sent an extravagant bouquet, the chances are it will have been wrapped in layers of cellophane and tied with plasticky ribbons. And if, like me, you have a penchant for a bunch of supermarket blooms, you’ve probably guiltily shoved the wrapping into the bin before artfully arranging them in your favourite vase. Traditionally, floristry has relied heavily on plastic as a practical source of packaging – one that keeps moisture contained and ensures flowers can be seen clearly by shoppers.
Surprisingly, it’s hard to find any recent data on the amount of plastic packaging used in floristry. The most frequently cited figure – 100,000 tons of plastic waste produced in the US every year, of which only 30% is recycled – dates to 1991, more than a decade before the term ‘microplastic’ was first used. It seems more than likely that even with our increased awareness of the damaging impact of single-use plastic, the current global figure will be significantly higher.
The other major culprit is floristry foam, otherwise known as Oasis. This is the weird, water-soluble substance that florists (never at Bloom!) traditionally used to keep flowers fresh in, among other things, centrepiece displays and wreaths. Harmful microplastics from floral foam have been found by scientists in aquatic creatures… and in human lungs.
What is sustainable floristry?
So can we, in good conscience, continue to buy cut flowers?
With so many damning statistics, I wouldn’t blame you for feeling pessimistic. I’ve certainly been worrying about how I’m going to curtail my tulip habit as I’ve been researching this blog.
The good news, however, is that sustainable floristry is here to save the day. Sustainable floristry is all about growing and selling beautiful blooms in a way that minimises the environmental impact as much as possible. And the even better news is that this isn’t just a niche business or only for East London hipsters with money to burn. There are sustainable florists all over the UK and ever-increasing awareness throughout the industry about the importance of adopting more ethical practices. More and more people are looking for sustainable options when planning events (apparently 39% of couples now consider sustainability when planning their wedding flowers) or simply when buying flowers for their own homes.
What can you do?
Prioritise buying seasonal, British flowers. A seasonally grown British bouquet produces ten times fewer carbon emissions than an imported one. Look for your local sustainable florist at Flowers from the Farm.
Support local farms and community flower gardens – like Bloom! – who may sell their flowers at markets or other local events.
If you need a special bunch of flowers in a pinch, ask your local florist – whether they claim to be sustainable or not – to select only seasonal, British blooms and not to use plastic packaging. If it’s practical, take your own vase or jug along so they can use that.
If you want to send flowers for a special occasion, look for companies that are certified carbon-neutral and transparent about where their flowers are grown and how they are packaged and delivered.
Recycle or reuse any packaging that your (seasonal, British) flowers came in. And remember that when your flowers are dead, you can compost them.
If you are concerned about unethical labour practices in commercial flower farms, look for bunches bearing the Fairtrade label. Farms that work with Fairtrade give 10% of their profits back to workers.
Check labels and ask questions. If information about where flowers came from or what material they’re packaged in isn’t readily available, chances are they’re not sustainable. Information on sustainable accreditations and labels to look for can be found here.
Grow your own!
Useful resources
Progress, not perfection
It’s hard, if not impossible, to make completely ethical choices all the time. And the truth is, these aren’t all simple, clear-cut issues. For example, some consumers may feel comfortable accepting the higher carbon footprint of a bunch of Fairtrade roses because the scheme helps to ensure floriculture workers – primarily women – have better pay, safer working conditions and access to improved healthcare and education.
It’s also important to acknowledge that often we buy – and give – flowers at moments when making considered buying decisions isn’t always a priority. When a friend is in need or a family member is ill, you might not have access to a sustainable florist. Maybe a bunch of supermarket roses is the best you can do to show you care in the moment. I think that’s OK. The important thing is to make informed choices when you can.
Are all supermarket flowers bad?
Supermarket flowers will never be as sustainable as those sourced from a specialist florist. But while we should always be alert for corporations’ propensity for greenwashing, you may find some of this information helpful when making buying decisions in the future.
ALDI, Asda, Co-op, M&S and LIDL all stock Fairtrade flowers. In 2018, Co-op became the first retailer to only use 100% Fairtrade roses when sourced from Africa.
Waitrose has its own scheme to support Kenyan flower growers. As with Fairtrade, a percentage of the price of Waitrose Foundation Flowers goes back to workers.
Co-op flower packaging (and other soft plastic wrappers) can be recycled in-store.
All M&S daffodils are sourced exclusively from one UK grower.
And if you do find yourself in the depths of a February funk and desperate for some cheer, it’s worth remembering the humble daffodil. Britain produces 90% of the world’s commercially-grown daffs, so your supermarket bunch probably has minimal miles on the clock. With daffodil farms across the UK, field-grown flowers are available from December through to late April without the need for artificial heating. And they’re usually sold without any plastic wrapping (just remember to save the elastic band that binds them for future use), so that’s another point in their favour. Not a perfect choice, but a better one.
Say NO to fast flowers
One of my pandemic projects was making a long-overdue shift away from fast fashion. It was a change I’d been resisting because I’ve always loved clothes and changing my high-street habits seemed like too big of an ask. I couldn’t imagine that the alternative – reducing the number of items I bought and prioritising shopping second-hand or from ethical retailers – would be either feasible or, quite frankly, any fun. It has been so rewarding to learn that isn’t the case at all. Shopping more consciously, and spending time sourcing unique items from vintage sellers, has made me fall in love with fashion all over again.
I realise now that my ‘blind spot’ about cheap, plastic-wrapped flowers came from a similar unwillingness to acknowledge something I knew in my heart to be true. Just as dresses shouldn’t cost a tenner, tulips do not bloom in January.
Now, I feel hopeful that making more informed, sustainable choices when buying flowers won’t be the chore I once imagined it would be. It might even be as rewarding as scoring the perfect vintage blouse on Etsy. When the Bloom shop opens, I’ll always know where to go to get a Sheffield-grown, 100% organic, completely ethical bunch of glorious seasonal flowers. Perhaps I’ll even go nuts with the tulip bulbs in September so that I have enough to cut for the house next April.
And if I end up cracking and buying a bunch from the Co-op, at least I know I can take the wrapping back to be recycled…