IF IT'S A CASE OF "IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS", THEN THE STATE OF MODERN FLORISTRY NEEDS A RE-THINK TOO"
- SSAW Collective
- Feb 12
- 6 min read
Rita Feldman, The Sustainable Floristry Network
"I can pinpoint the moment when the rose thing came into focus:
It was a Saturday night in the summer of 2016 or 17. I’d stopped at our local grocer, a small independent supermarket on the fringes of Australia’s main flower growing region. It had been a long day setting up a wedding with perfect, in-season, locally-grown garden roses. Their sweet fragrance – potent enough to cut through the sprayed-on scents of 100 guests – lingered with me.
I often used that post-work supermarket shop to quietly wind-down from the day’s heat and intensity. So I dawdled through the aisles and started picking up things I wouldn’t normally buy, just to see where they came from. Beans from Mexico, maple syrup from Canada, salmon from Norway, pickles from Poland. I could tackle just about any recipe in the world with the ingredients in this small, semi-rural supermarket.
Then I saw the roses: short-stemmed, sepals upright, crunchy plastic wrap. I knew at a glance that they were imported too. They were sad and defeated-looking: the petals fringed with oncoming decay, the stems bruised from coarse, production-line thorn removal.
Any aesthetic delight appeared long lost, yet these spoiled, perishable commodities remained on display. It was likely no one would buy them and a day later they’d be in the large back-of-supermarket waste bin, amongst putrid meat scraps and tubs of greening margarine. From there, the floral remains, entombed in their plastic shroud, would be transported to their final resting place: an Australian tip, 12 000kms from the soil of their birth.
Changing flowers
So why do we sell roses like this within a sprinkler distance of beautiful, seasonal blooms?
The answer is complicated, tied up in all the usual side-effects of globalisation, capitalism and a changing world of work. The local flower farming industry here, once the mainstay of European floriculture migrants and their families, has changed since planes started bringing in flowers. Family businesses have wound up, the old guard has retired and new growers are emerging. Today, the number of rose growers in Australia is a fraction of what it once was.
This Valentine’s Day, a bunch of imported roses wholesales for about the same as a bunch grown around the corner (in Australia) A wholesaler's price list details nothing more than the colour, price and length of stem – four words “import”, “local”, “colour” and “red”. There is nothing about the provenance, certification, distance travelled or date of arrival, though these questions might be answered at the point of sale.
Come this Friday and stems and bunches will move to consumers. Single rose stems trapped in clear plastic cylinders will suddenly appear in petrol stations and convenience stores, roadside opportunists will pop up with bunches for homeward bound workers and supermarkets will have extra grab-and-go arrangements, temptingly positioned in the impulse lane.
Somewhere along the way, flowers have become stuff. On days like St Valentine’s, they’re more a symbol than an experience. The essence of the rose comes in a distant second place to the rose-giving gesture — the evidence required to show that love has been declared.
If it’s a case of “it’s the thought that counts”, then the state of modern floristry needs a rethink too.
Overconsumption
What is clear is that excess consumption is the heart of the world’s environmental problems. Humanity wants more stuff than the Earth can provide. This includes everything that draws on natural resources and requires energy for production and transport.
Scientists and policy-makers are exhausting themselves trying to explain this to us in ways we can understand. They tell us about carbon footprints, the planetary boundaries and Earth Overshoot Day while another hottest record pops up and fades into the news, overtaken by stories less abstract or more immediate; we’ll deal with it another day.
Of course, consumption patterns amongst the world’s populations varies enormously. Inequality is deeply embedded in the way different societies, and different groups within those societies, use resources. This is clear when we look at greenhouse gas emissions. The top 10% of the world’s earners generate over half the world’s emissions, while the richest 1% is responsible for more than double the emissions of the world’s poorest half.
The greatest impacts, on the other hand, are felt by the world’s most vulnerable populations, who lack the infrastructure and resources to protect against drought, flood and other extreme weather events. The whole system is built on inequality.
Overconsumption also creates excessive waste and pollution. Approximately 30-40% of fresh fruit and vegetables are wasted across the various stages of the food supply chain, mostly as a function of being perishable. Our fixation with acquiring more stuff has left a legacy of pollution: discarded electronics, household goods and construction material weeping toxic chemicals into the earth, an infinite number of plastic particles seeping into the food chain.
Changing mindset
Endless, mindless consumption fuelled by unchecked greed is at the root of all our environmental problems. We know this. So why do we seem unable to stop?
Perhaps humanity needs a reminder that happiness does not come from feeding greed or having everything you want. A healthy GDP does not guarantee a happy society; getting stuff and being rich doesn’t necessarily do the trick. Science, philosophy, religion and spirituality all point to other causes: bigger, external, purposeful, community-based and altruistic – and so much of ‘happiness’ is related to the individual lens in which we view things.
This is not to say we must all ditch our day jobs to become activists. Poverty does increase our risk of mental illness, chronic disease, higher mortality, and lower life expectancy. It’s about finding a sense of security within a new equilibrium and balance.
Perhaps the trick is to remember that our security is tied to the security of the planet. Humans are part of nature and depend on a healthy natural world. Like every other species, we are totally reliant on the processes that deliver us air to breath and water to drink, and the intricate, interconnected webs of life that give us food and shelter. All living beings are interdependent in some way or another.
To create a sustainable society, we must realign with nature. Or in the words of David Attenborough, “we need to work with nature, not against it”.
Every nation, industry, company, community and person must insert this simple principle into their decision-making and consumption choices.
But while the principle is simple, putting it into practice can be complex.
It starts with thinking differently about stuff. We have to think about where things come from and where they are going. We have to consider the whole lifecycle, from creation through to disposal, aiming at all stages for no waste. Part of this process involves recalibrating what we really want and what we really need.
Valentine’s Day
Flowers are luxuries; we don’t need them to survive. But they can bring great joy, across all cultures and say much when words fail. At their most powerful, flowers reconnect us to the natural world and plug us in to the beat of nature’s rhythms. They slow us down, enrich our senses and remind us of all the beauty in the world.
In Australia, it will be rose season on the 14th February. It is a big day for florists, a warm-up event for Mother’s Day in May. It is a good time of year to celebrate with roses.
“Honestly, if you ask me, I’d be happy if Valentine’s Day didn’t exist at all,” says Greg, a second generation rose grower.
Greg grows red roses. Beautiful roses, for local sale. What Greg would prefer is for all kinds of lovers to express their feelings through rose-giving at a steady, rose-growing pace. That means evenly, throughout the growing season and across the colour spectrum. Feeling amorous, generous or grateful? Give your loved one some roses: seasonal, vibrant, fresh and alive. Give because you want to enjoy roses, not because consumerism at its worst told you to.
Establishing the tipping point between working with and against nature is like recognising when a current has changed direction. If we are working with a tide that takes us away from the circular, seasonal cycles in which we seek synchronicity, then that’s the point at which we need to rethink our consumption choices.
For lovers in the Northern Hemisphere, most roses will have followed a current on the other side of the equator. They might be like the supermarket roses – bone tired and barely natural. They might be beautiful, but burdened by emissions, or the residues of pesticides, or the sweat of invisible, exploited employees. They might also be part of a certification program that is attempting to improve a system made unsustainable by all the above.
This is the point we must reconsider our choices. There are many questions to ask, but there is a simple place to start.
Are these roses working with nature, or against it?"
RITA FELDMAN
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