True many florists are touting they only work with 100% organic flowers, but that is kind of a fib. Why? Because the market won't support a 100% total organic florists year around so eventually that business will suffer beyond the ability to fund a "ideal", truthfully, if someone is touting true organic flowers then they are selling bug chewed and flawed flowers. It's like going to the produce isle of a grocery market and choosing between a ripe red flawless apple or a red apple a few worm holes. The media and even a number of so called educated industry pros have carelessly condemned flower growers in South America for using pesticides, herbicides, and even contributing to the demise of poor helpless laborers by gassing them.
Where do we do to pin the label "Green" to our brand?? First we need to realize that commercial growers in South America, California, Holland, and New Zealand have made HUGE leaps in adopting sustainable methods of producing "flawless flowers" that we all want, what our clients demand from us. The system is not perfect, but they have done a fabulous job with adopting natural pest control practices, preservation, and mostly worker safety and wellbeing.
Because you buy flowers with the "Veriflora" label printed on the side of the shipping box, you are essentially supplying "sustainable" flowers, you are in fact supporting the "Green" trend. Proclaim that to your clients, don't be the end of the effort of the backs of many who assure that they are doing their part in being ecologically sustainable.
So it's basic, most of us know how to supply products that can be labeled "Green". Hooray, good for us! Really? Is that it? Kind of lazy way of looking at the whole picture, ya think? What about our operations? If we demand everyone to supply us with "Green" products shouldn't we be practicing sustainable in our own operations? We don't think twice about using buckets of preservatives and disposing it down the drain, out of sight out of mind all in the quest for giving the flower and extra few days of life. Fortunately city refuse regulations are forcing some of us to separate our recyclable materials especially for those of us who operate in a residential zone. My company moved from a DC a commercial zoned area complete with a mammoth dumpster to a rural Connecticut residential zoned area and am forced to separate garbage, recyclables that are labeled to everyday everything else. We started with a 95 gallon container once a week to that same container for recyclables once every two weeks and a 65 gallon container once a week. So I am forced to separate everything just so I don't swim in garbage.
I don't proclaim to anyone that I am a "Green" event designer, however because of my circumstances I naturally practice sustainable ways of dealing. First off is my garbage. Fortunately I live on a piece of land that I built a barn/studio on so I can easily dump all my green waste in a compost pile. This accounts for more then half of my waste. I have two barrels in my studio, one for collecting greens, and one for plastics and odds. I salvage everything, I precut Oasis before soaking so I'm not disposing chunks of wet foam. Much of the packing materials like bubble wrap, paper, styro, I use for transporting. All my shipping boxes are returned to the wholesalers. I use milk creates instead of cardboard for transporting everything to an event. Everything that is recycable goes in the bin for collection. We have a city refusal transpher station that I can take everything else that is recycable, wood, used oil, paint cans, etc. If you live in a commercial zoned area maybe you can collect your greens an barrels and have a driver load and dump at a community compost pile. Or maybe you can request a separate bin or pick up container from your city. I think the point is to try and separate anything recyclable, wasteful, from your green material.
We do in the summer and fall months buy from various local flower farmers that do grow organic flowers and that helps, the quality is usually very good but it is seasonal and varieties are limited to few weeks of mature crop harvest. I do grow various plants on my property but hope to eventually grow quite a bit: boxwood, curly willow, hydrangea, magnolia, peony, and various shrubs.
Some of the products we offer like soy candles help, the paper products, we try to use recycled papers, invitations, office paper, etc. Much of my propwork I save and refashion new props from. You would be surprised what you can find at second hand stores and antique shops, even tag sales are a wealth of inexpensive prop material and vases headed for the landfill.
Going "Green" does cut into our profits, it means a few extra steps in our all ready overburdened days. But you have to look at it as an investment into our industries survival. There are many examples of industries failing because they happen to be stuck in a unsustainable business model. Paper Magazines, inefficient, reliant on forest products and heavy oil consuming transport methods. Lets not follow path, do what we can now because what we do affects the long term survival of events in the future. Markets adjust because the end users set the demand and the entire industry sets it's own trend because there are many creative and conscious people working hard everyday to sustain the earth and it's resources.
Do your part.
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