This year for Valentine’s Day, show your sweetie that you care about the environment as much as you do for him or her, by NOT sending them flowers. Aside from the fact that cut flowers die within days (unlike your eternal love), they can also be riddled with pesticides, be sourced from countries using unethical labor, and lack the quality control measures that keep them from being environmentally destructive. PissedConsumer.com wants to appeal to your romantic side, while also rousing the treehugger within you — read on for what they have to say.
Love me or love me not, true love doesn’t have to take the shape of a dozen roses. Vladimir Nardin, the Executive Director of PissedConsumer.com is all for the celebration of love, but he just wants consumers to be aware that buying a bouquet from a florist may not be as sweet as its meant to be.
First of all, those beautiful blooms are likely to not have even been grown in the United States. Between January 1 to February 14 of last year, the US Customs and Border Protection processed 842 million cut flower stems — most from Colombia and Ecuador. Aside from not supporting local businesses, the source of many of the stems weren’t be regulated, meaning that some of the pieces (if not all) of your artful arragement may have been plucked using a cheap and unregulated labor source.
Moreover, the pesticides used to raise these flowers in said South American countries and elsewhere — where their health effects and toxicity aren’t regulated — can cause a bevy of health and environmental problems. This means that the communities growing your flowers may be hurt by their cultivation in both the short and long term.
Of course not all flowers are unethically sourced, PissedConsumer.com simply wants to raise awareness and urge consumers to do their homework before picking up a bouquet.
So this year, instead of a floral arrangement, profess your love with a potted plant or one of our awesome DIY gifts!
+ Pissed Consumer
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