Monday, April 2, 2007

Plastic-free: Flowers

I feel guilty every time I buy flowers. I think it has to do with my cruelty-free chromosome. Something so so beautiful, having it’s life cut short (literally) for me, just seems so, so wrong. I just don’t feel I have the right.

That’s why I never buy flowers for myself. But sometimes, I will admit, I buy them for others. I know, that’s a big wallop of makes-no-sense, illogical, incongruency – but there you have it.

But now that I’ve given up plastic in 2007, buying flowers presents not just a moral challenge, but also a plastic challenge too. Because flowers come wrapped in plastic…

Now you might be thinking ‘Well EnviroWoman, buy a plant instead!' And usually I do. It seems like such an obvious, guilt-free and great solution, doesn’t it? Except plants come in green plastic pots.

I thought if I narrowed my search to plants potted in ceramic or wicker planters I’d come up smelling like a rose. But NOOOOOO, because those puppies can be oh-so-devious – dig deep with your green thumb, and you’ll discover they’re often just a plastic potted plant popped into a ceramic planter.

I searched high and low, and thought I may have to give up on the whole ‘welcome the new team member with flowers’ notion….and then I lucked out and found flowers in a glass vase – completely plastic-free.

The original container the roses were stored in was metal too - so this seemed to be as close to ‘plastic-free’ as I was gonna get. The florist even let me carry my bouquet out of the store ‘as-is’ with no extra packaging/wrapping.

So here’s how things add up:

Category: Flowers
SAINT: Bouquets in a glass vases.
Price: More expensive. You’re not gonna find $5 worth of daisies in a glass vase, plus you’re paying for the vase. But at least the vase is reusable.
Quality: The same…and come to think of it….a much nicer gift for the recipient
SINNER: All flowers packaged in plastic and all plants in those green plastic planters.


Lessons Learned:

  • Dig deep. Looks can be deceiving. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty and get to the root of the problem to discover if there is really is something more sinister below the pretty fascade. True with flowers. True with life. (Can't you just see it now 'The Tao of EnviroWoman'. Pooh, ya better watch out!)