Actually, I wasn't feeling very inspired and I stumbled foolishly upon this photo, and then I thought, "I'm going to talk about flowers," yes, I know ice cream would also have been a good topic...
I don't know if the market is declining or not, but what I do know is that in our lives, we have always both given and received flowers. The question is their origin. Many majority come from Holland by truck, which isn't great for CO2 levels, as they can also come from Israel, India, and Kenya... and I'm not just saying this, but according to a 2007 study by the Institute of Natural Resources Management at Cranfield University (Great Britain), Dutch farms emit almost 6 times more greenhouse gases than Kenyan farms. The reason: heating greenhouses, as flowers need a lot of light and warmth to grow. Not to mention that after harvesting, flowers need constant refrigeration!
But, and this is where the problem lies, because we consume tons of them, these flowers are very, very water-intensive, and yes, since we want a lot of them, they need to be watered and treated with pesticides (and other harmful chemical inputs)... and yet flowers are so cute... and to that I add the conditions of the growers whose employees are exploited.
And that's why Max Havelaar (OK, we're not going to reintroduce or recomment them here) launched fair trade roses.
Great idea, because of decent wages, small producers, social projects, in short, a big favorite... in France, a reseller offers fair trade roses: Ethiflora
Personally, I have a garden with roses so... however, I saw a report on France 5 a year ago about ethical roses and it wasn't great... any thoughts?



