Being Green - Baby steps are better than no steps at all.
Hi, I’m Emily and welcome to Scissor & Spade’s first ever blog post! Woah, I’m a bit excited.
So when I started S&S I decided to start a fresh with a green philosophy. My business needed to be more than an average local florist, to be more than what supermarkets were offering, to be apart of the community and to be proud of my place within it. Leading by example is sometimes easier said then done but when it comes to being more considerate of the environment it just takes baby steps to get the ball a’rollin.
Mt Coot- tha Look Out, Brisbane
There is no such thing as 'away.' When we throw anything away it must go somewhere - Annie Leonard
I try my best to be more considerate of what I consume, how I can reuse, reduce and recycle the things I use to run my business and create products with. Being green is as easy as asking this question - is there an alternative?
First cab of the rank - floral foam. Im not angel, I've used tonnes of the stuff for years whilst working for other florists and I'm not here to tell anyone how to run their business, I'm just doing me. At S&S I don't use floral foam and for a few reasons. Its gross to work with wet or dry. When it’s dry its particles easily get in to your eyes which hurt like no-ones business. Its made from lots of not so great chemicals and it’s a ‘one use’ product meaning once its wet and then drys again thats it, you can’t rewet it for reuse. After floral foam has been soaked in water, it leaves residue behind which 9/10 ends up going down the drain which is bad news for our waterways as it’s not biodegradable. In other bad news, in my experience, flowers tend not to last as long when arrangement into floral foam compared to when they are in plain water so it’s a no brainer for me really.
The alternative - redesign your products and if you’re a customer, request #noflorafloam. Designing without floral foam can be easy and is super on trend too which is fantastic. Florists all over the world are doing it and spreading the word on how they are achieving their designs without it. Whether it’s using the Japanese Kensan, designing straight in to a tall vase or using chickenwire and water vials for installations - the good news is achieving floral magic is 100% possible without the use of foam.
Composting - for the ‘how to’s’ click this link to hear all about it from Costa from Gardening Australia. What a legend. Collect all the cuttings, leaves, broken or dead stems and flower heads and just decide to dispose of them in a more thoughtful way. Instead of chucking them in a plastic bag and throwing it in the garbage ask yourself “Can this be composted?”. If you have no access or ability to compost onsite, an alternative would be getting access to a council green waste bin. For S&S and my personal green waste, I use a combination of home compost system and a green council bin. I recently learnt that not all Australian councils provide a Green Waste Bin service which is absolutely ridiculous but that’s battle for another day. There are also private waste companies that offer compost bins depending on how much green waste you produce, this option might be not suitable. Hot tip - get a mulcher. This will reduce the volume of your waste and help break down the green matter much faster.
Important to note - if you aren’t 100% sure that the flowers and foliage you use are organic meaning no harmful pesticides have been used on them, don’t use the compost created with this green waste on produce/food producing garden beds.
Packaging - I love fluro, shinny rainbow stuff as much as the next person and it takes all my will power muscle to steer clear of it when deciding how to package S&S products. Some of the products I source from wholesalers unfortunately come with plastic on them for protection in shipping. I hate this and try my best to not be apart of the cycle of passing the plastic ‘buck’ down the consumable line as it were. I want S&S customers to receive a beautiful product that doesn’t require them to make yet another decision in their day as to how to deal with plastic. That shouldn’t be the consumers problem to deal with - it has to come from the source. S&S is the middle-man so to speak but I still have a responsibility to my customers and the environment. Progress is being made in this area with compostable plastic products and PET plastic materials being used instead of plastics that are difficult to recycle, so there that is a real positive. S&S isn’t perfect! I use paper based, recyclable or compostable wrapping paper, ties and water bags. However products like satin ribbons and rubber bands aren’t compostable. Rubber bands technically could be composted, but take a very long time to do so.
Lastly, buying Australian grown flowers over imported flowers. This is sometimes easier said than done depending on where you are in the country.
Helpful links -
Free and affordable compost options - Brisbane City Council.
What can and can’t be recycled in Australia - Clean Up Australia.
Compostable Plastic - Clean Up Australia.
Aussie Grown Flowers - Grown not Flown.
This arrangement is designed using the chicken wire technique #nofloralfoam
