The ideal approach to lift a friend’s spirits is with a bright, cheery bouquet of natural flowers. A pink or blue spray is frequently the first gift given to a baby, celebrating the beginning of a new life. Flowers that are organic and natural have the ability to convey ideas that sometimes words cannot. Have you given any regard to the source of your organic flowers, though? Natural flowers are flawed by their very nature. As a result, pesticides and herbicides are frequently sprayed on plants in the organic floral sector. Natural florists discard two out of every three bouquets of flowers because they think they are imperfect.
Important holidays are frequently observed by many individuals with magnificent bouquets of cut flowers. The result is that the flower industry is flourishing, sending tonnes of flowers throughout the globe for sale in grocery stores and florists. Customers buy and have flowers delivered for millions of dollars each year, and the majority of them don’t consider the industry’s effects on the environment or the community. Although large scale production and transport of flowers can have some impact on the environment, there are eco friendly ways to buy flowers as well.
What are eco-friendly flowers?
A sustainably sourced flower is a fresh cut flower that is not treated with pesticides and can be found, grown, and sold locally.
One reason that cut flowers may not be considered sustainable is that they require too many resources and transportation to get to their destination — especially bouquets.
Flowers need more resources to keep them fresher longer when they are transported a long distance. The use of excessive resources and energy is typically regarded as unsustainable, together with the emissions brought on by travel.
Flowers may be produced organically, although they are not necessarily long-lasting. Your flowers might not be sustainable for a number of reasons, such as the fact that they were produced far away and required numerous resources to preserve and transport, or that they may have been treated with harmful pesticides and chemicals.
The greatest method to discover “sustainable flowers” is to shop locally, just like you would for food, in terms of geography. Locally grown flowers are equivalent to flowers that were grown sustainably, just like food. The greatest place to look for fresh cut flowers that are sustainable is a farmer’s market close by.
Here are some tips to ensure that the flowers you buy are eco friendly and cause minimal environmental damage.
Buy certified organic flowers
Flowers that are cultivated conventionally are treated similarly to non-organic fruits and vegetables, and the detrimental effects of toxic pesticides are felt far and wide. These dangerous substances can damage producers’ health, deplete the soil and land of the biodiversity required for all life, and even leak into larger bodies of water through run-off from surrounding streams and waterways. Purchasing certified organic flowers avoids all three of these situations and ensures that your purchase supports farms who look after their neighborhood and their land.
Shop from local stores
Almost all blooms purchased in stores come from elsewhere. After being cut and packaged, they are transported across long distances by truck or ships, leaving a substantial carbon impact. Therefore, try to pick locally produced flowers for your next bouquet to keep your mileage down. Within 50 miles of your home, you may typically find flowers that have been cultivated responsibly.
This will increase local economic growth and reduce carbon emissions because it will take less time to get to you.
Purchasing from your neighborhood florist is also preferable because it is simpler to let them know that you want them to fulfil your order using sustainable practices.
For instance, you can ask your neighborhood florist to wrap your flowers in butcher paper if you’d like them to be free of plastic.
This will increase demand for more environmentally friendly methods and facilitate building a relationship with your florist.
Buy seasonal flowers
Purchasing in-season flowers also makes them more environmentally beneficial because fewer resources are needed to grow them.
You an find a list of seasonal flowers available in your location from various online sources. You can also grow your own seasonal plants and cut the flowers yourself to ensue that there is minimal environmental damage.
You can find some of our best seasonal flowers from the link below.