Decorate your home with flowers and plants is healthy and can improve the well-being. If you want to live a conscious and sustainable life, it’s not just about your own well-being. It’s also about environmentally friendly consumer behavior. Buying fresh cut flowers frequently is not sustainable for several reasons:
high water consumption
exploitation of labor
long transport routes
chemicals
pesticides
pollution
Statistics from the flower industry show that Germany in particular spends billions of euros a year on fresh flowers. Every third rose or carnation comes from developing countries.1
In terms of environmental protection and climate catastrophe, normal fresh flowers from the supermarket are not justifiable.
Sustainable floral decoration is diverse and can look like this, for example:
picking flowers on walks
get potted flowers or plants
buy fair trade flowers
buy from local organic farmers
most sustainable: decorate with dried flowers (pick, don’t buy).
But the above reasons against fresh flowers can also apply to dried flowers. For those who simply buy dried flowers like fresh flowers, are not really acting more sustainably. Meanwhile, the industry has picked up the trend of dried plants and offers dried flowers, ferns, etc. These are often grown and dried in the same countries as fresh flowers. In addition, they are often dyed and bleached with chemical agents.2
So if you don’t pick the dried flowers yourself, make sure when you buy them that they are organically grown locally and only buy natural plants. That’s one solution for your personal well-being and a sustainable home.
1 https://www.greenpeace.de/themen/landwirtschaft/bluhende-geschafte-auf-kosten-von-mensch-und-umwelt [researched 11.11.2021]
2 https://utopia.de/ratgeber/trockenblumen-wie-nachhaltig-ist-der-trend/ [researched 11.11.2021]