Support US-Sourced Florists This Valentine’s Day
This Valentine’s Day Americans will spend billions on cut flowers to express their affection for the special people in their lives.
But those who patron large grocery and floral retailers may do so unaware that the flowers they buy are likely sourced from countries with horrible human rights and environmental records.
This can change if Congress and government agencies take it seriously.
Valentine’s Day generates the single highest number of U.S. floral sales compared to any other holiday. Flowers were the third most popular Valentine’s Day gift last year (behind candy and greeting cards) – over 35 percent of U.S. consumers boughtthem. The year before, flower sales generated $2.3 billion for the U.S. economy on the day itself.
The U.S. flower market is a massive $9 billion-a-year industry. Yet few know that about 80 percent of all U.S. cut flowers sold are imported, and roughly half originate from just two countries: Colombia and Ecuador.
Those same countries are known for other things: utilizing childlabor, histories of horrendous workplace conditions, and inflicting massive environmental damage in the harvesting and shipping of cut flowers sold to the U.S.
The problem has existed for decades. Just two years ago the U.S. Department of Labor found that children in Ecuador are “subjected to the worst forms of child labor.” They note over 85 percent of working children in Ecuador between the ages of five and 14 are involved in the agriculture industry, which includes flower production.
Past studies have also found a disturbing number of children with prenatal pesticide exposure specific to workers in Ecuador’s floriculture industry.
In Colombia, a Business Insider investigation identified more than 9,000 cases of work-related injuries on flower farms between 2010 and 2019. A former Colombian flower worker interviewed said she had to cut 480 stems per hour while she was on the job. Another worker said she used to cut 1,800 flowers a day, and now at age 46 can barely walk.
The environmental cost of flower imports is also troubling. An enormous amount of water is required to sustain it – a dozen roses can consume up to 40 gallons throughout production.
Flowers shipped to the U.S. must be flown thousands of miles in planes with special refrigerated cargo bays. Five years ago, during the three weeks prior to Valentine’s Day, 30 separate jets,each carrying more than a million flowers, would travel to Miami from Colombia every day. 200 refrigerated trucks would pick them up each day and route them for U.S. distribution. Imagine what these numbers are today.
The website of one of the leading online flower retailers notes their supply comes “from farms in the U.S. and abroad that follow socially and environmentally responsible practices as certified by industry leading organizations.” But their 2022 annual report states they are “dependent on international vendors,” and that “most of the flowers sold in the United States are grown by farmers located abroad, primarily in Colombia, Ecuador and Holland, and the Company expects that this will continue in the future.”
And there’s a concerning lack of transparency with respect to some of the international floral certification organizations. Identities of specific Colombian and Ecuadorian flower farms that receive these certifications can be difficult to find online. Overall adoption of their standards isn’t readily known, either.
Further, there appears to be questionable enforcement of U.S. law designed to prevent imports from other countries that practice forced child labor. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is responsible for enforcement of the Tariff Act, which explicitly “prohibits importing any product that was mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part by forced labor, including forced or indentured child labor.”
How are flowers from Ecuador – which the U.S. Department of Labor has flagged as a country where children as young as five years old are working in their floriculture industry – allowed to enter America?
We can change this. Lawmakers can investigate whether flowers arriving on our shores are being cultivated ethically and responsibly. The CBP can do more to enforce its mandate. We, as consumers, can flex our buying power and support local florists that source flowers exclusively from U.S. suppliers. Larger floral retailers can change their business models and commit to doing the same.
Only then will we see real progress in reducing the flower industry’s impact on human rights and environmental injustice.
Lee Rhodes is founder and CEO of glassybaby, a small business that produces all of its products in the USA and has given over $14 million to protect people, animals, and the planet.
