Environmentally Responsible Floristry Practices

One of the more deliberate contributions Florage Florist makes to the community is through its environmental practices. Floristry is an industry that has relied on materials with real environmental costs, and Florage has worked to change how it operates in response to that.

The two most common problematic materials in floristry are plastic wrapping and floral foam. Plastic wrapping is widely used to protect bouquets during transport. It does its job but it is almost always single-use and ends up in landfill. Floral foam is used to hold flower stems in position within arrangements. It is convenient, but it is made from petroleum-based plastics and breaks down into microplastics when it degrades. Those particles enter waterways and do not break down further. The floristry industry uses floral foam at large volumes, and the environmental impact accumulates.

Florage does not use floral foam. The team arranges flowers using traditional mechanics: reusable supports, wire structures, and careful stem placement that uses the natural weight and structure of the flowers themselves. It takes more skill and more time than foam. The results hold up, and no microplastics enter the drainage system.

Plastic wrapping has been largely replaced with hessian. Hessian is a natural fibre, durable and biodegradable. Customers who receive flowers wrapped in it can reuse the material or leave it to break down. The presentation is different from plastic, more textural and natural, and most customers respond well to it. The switch required some adjustment in how the team works, but it has been part of standard practice long enough that it is simply how things are done.

Green waste from daily operations is also managed carefully. Floristry produces a steady volume of organic material: stems trimmed during arranging, leaves stripped for presentation, flowers past their best. Rather than sending this to general waste, Florage separates it for commercial composting. Commercial composting breaks organic material down under controlled conditions and produces compost that returns to agricultural use. The alternative is landfill, where organic material decomposes and produces methane.

For a business working with plant material every day, this is not a trivial difference.  These practices contributed to Florage receiving awards for Sustainable Retail Excellence.

Customers sometimes learn about these practices through conversation at the counter, particularly around floral foam, which many people have never heard of. Those conversations tend to be worth having. They often prompt people to think about materials used in other everyday products and what alternatives might exist. For the team, it is a useful outcome of decisions they would have made regardless.

Floristry works with living materials from the natural world. The way those materials are handled, from sourcing through to the disposal of what remains, is part of what it means to do the work responsibly. Florage has tried to get that right across every stage of the process.