Zero Waste: flowers and plants
I guess it will be clear to you that I love flowers. But how Zero Waste are flowers and plants?
Cut flowers
Yes, I love flowers! I regularly buy a few bunches of cut flowers at the Garden Center nearby, fill several vases with them and enjoy them. But yes, all the plastic in which the flowers are packed! During this month I bought cut flowers once in a fit of greed, where I only realized after the purchase that I was doing a Zero Waste Challenge. It does offer a topic to blog about. A number of cellophane sheets as waste. Let’s dive into that.
Cellophane
The main constituent of Cellophane is cellulose. It is therefore 100% biodegradable vegetable (gosh!), but the production is environmentally harmful and therefore certainly not Zero Waste! If you start looking for alternatives to Cellophane as a packaging for cut flowers, it doesn’t look good. It just isn’t there at this moment. You should not necessarily have to pack bouquets. However, if you sell in buckets of bushes with similar flowers you will have to keep them together in one way or another. Of course, the elastic band is at the bottom of the bunch, but it doesn’t work very well. And wrapping in a newspaper isn’t that practical because of the water in the bucket. Hmmmm… ..
Plants
Even when you are going to buy plants for your home or outside, you cannot escape from plastic. And that’s not the only thing. These plants are purchased at the auction and delivered in plastic trays. Sometimes there is a deposit, but often not. Waste that you may not immediately see, but which is indeed there! I did some investigation here. “They” are certainly aware of the problems, a solution is not that simple.
Alternatives
Do I have alternatives? Not really … You can of course decide not to buy cut flowers or plants (anymore). For cut flowers, a picking garden in the neighborhood might be an option. You could share and / or cut plants. This is possible for both outdoor plants and indoor plants. Also quite fun to do of course, also with your children. Take a good look at what is in the garden and in the house of your family and friends 😊
Here you can check yesterdays blog about Zero Waste Clothes.
