Sowing the seeds of climate action
The time when tulips meet
As Valentine’s Day approached, it was interesting to see how people related differently to it. Some of my friends and I saw it as a gentle reminder of how deeply single we were, whilst others were doing their best to manage the expectations of their partners without needing to take a 25-year bank loan.
There are many competing stories regarding the origin of Valentine’s Day. Accounts date the first Valentine’s Day to 496 AD when the Romans held a festival named Lupercalia. The pagan festival was supposedly then rebranded by Pope Gelasius to celebrate a martyr, Saint Valentine.
Regardless of its potential origins, Valentine’s Day is now a key holiday where some express their feelings to the people they love. When I attended elementary school in the US, I remember us bringing decorated shoeboxes in which classmates would exchange kind letters of appreciation.
Although love is intangible, its economic benefits are real as Valentine’s Day has become more of an industry than a holiday. In the United States alone, it was expected that consumers would spend $26bn on gifts, equivalent to Iceland’s GDP! This makes Valentine’s day the nation’s fifth-largest consumer spending event.
A thorny industry for the planet
Due to the mass consumption of cards, flowers and other gifts, you can imagine how the environmental impact of such a celebration scales up when accounting for the greenhouse gas emissions of each activity.
While roughly a billion stems of roses are grown worldwide, it is estimated that 25% of roses are produced for Valentine’s Day alone.
Taking an average emission factor of 2.4 kgCO2e per rose stem, the emissions from roses produced for the 14th of February would amount to 600,000 tonnes of CO2e, equivalent to the annual emissions of Somalia.
The emissions emitted by roses are representative of the broader environmental impact of the flower industry, which can be bucketed into four main categories:
- Production:
Growing flowers indoors is heavily reliant on fossil fuels for heating and lighting. In the Netherlands, it was estimated that 79% of the agricultural sector’s energy was used to power greenhouses for horticulture.
When grown outside, pesticides and herbicides are often used excessively, contaminating soils and groundwater reserves. This is possible for growers as flowers are non-edible crops and benefit from more lenient regulations.
- Transportation:
Cheaper labour and consistent sunlight throughout the year have pushed flower production closer to the equator. Consequently, the US imports 75% of its flowers, while Kenya supplies Europe with 40% of its cut flowers.
There is pressure in the industry for flowers to go from farm to shop quickly as due to their limited shelf-life, these products lose up to 15% of their value for every extra day in transit.
As they need to stay fresh, a “cold chain” is required, with refrigeration consuming additional energy on trucks, boats and planes. In the build-up to Valentine’s day, 30 cargo planes flew from Colombia to Miami every day.
- Packaging:
When transported, cut flowers tend to be wrapped in plastics such as cellophane. Additionally, foam is used for neatly arranging flowers.
Using these materials contributes to the production of single-use plastics and ocean microplastic pollution when wastewater is poured down the drain.
- Disposal:
Following their short-life span of 7 to 12 days, fresh flowers will often find their way to the bin before ending up in landfills.
As they contain organic matter, the decomposition of flowers in landfills will release methane, a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential that is 30 times greater than carbon dioxide, as it traps more heat in the atmosphere.
Nipping emissions in the bud
Flowers play a key role in the human journey, with their presence in art, religion, love and ultimately, death.
We are unlikely to reduce our consumption unless the energy crisis renders indoor growing economically unviable or if climate change makes the equatorial growing of flowers a page in the history books.
Nevertheless, organisations and individuals can play a role in reducing the environmental impact of the flower industry by:
- Growers
- Installing rainwater harvesting technology to reduce costs and ease the pressure on groundwater sources.
- Producing renewable energy with solar panels on farms, especially as flower-producing nations along the equator benefit from consistent sunshine throughout the year.
- Minimising pesticide and herbicide use, leveraging regenerative agriculture practices such as cover cropping and crop rotating, which improve the soil’s health and ability to capture carbon.
2. Florists
- Purchasing local and seasonal flowers to reduce the need for excessively long supply chains and fuel consumption through transportation.
- Exercising caution when purchasing locally, with an emphasis on the seasonality of flowers, as energy consumption in European greenhouses can lead flowers to be 5.5 times more carbon intensive than those airfreighted from Kenya. Local does not always imply lower carbon!
- Replacing single-use plastic packaging with alternative materials such as recycled paper or reusable glass vases.
3. Consumers
- Growing your own flowers if you are lucky enough to have access to a garden or balcony. You can create an environment for pollinators, gain a sense of ownership and cut transportation.
- Composting your flowers could improve soil health for future plant growth and ensure that your flowers do not end up in a landfill.
- Purchasing Fairtrade flowers as beyond environmental concerns, the industry has historically been linked to poor working conditions, health concerns with exposure to pesticides and low pay. By doing so, farms will get a 10% premium, enabling better pay for workers.
Reducing emissions in the flower industry is particularly interesting as it is intrinsically linked with decarbonisation in the energy, agricultural, transportation, waste management and packaging sectors.
From systemic change to shifting individual behaviours, a lot of work awaits for flowers to bloom in a Net Zero world. In a couple of decades, we will be able to see which actors rose to the occasion.
