A bouquet of flowers is the go-to gift for many special occasions but the world is paying a high price for transporting our out-of-season blooms.
In life's big moments we often reach for a bouquet of flowers, but many of us might not know what it takes to get them into our hands. Many of the flowers sold in Australia have been flown around the world before they get to us, kept in cold containers for hours, or even days.
The freshwater of Lake Naivasha is the lifeblood of many of the country's largest flower farms, with around 70 per cent of the nation's growers based in the area. Supply chains in the industry can be extremely long and a single stem can have a significant carbon footprint. Sometimes, flowers grown in Kenya will be exported to a floral wholesaler in another country, before being air-freighted again to the nation where they will finally be sold to the consumer.
But once Peter Szapary sells his roses and they are air-freighted abroad, the journey will generate carbon emissions he can't control. And his efforts to reduce his environmental footprint are not necessarily helping him to sell flowers, either. "The consumer wants the cheapest," he says, "which puts the farmer under tremendous pressure."
"But we have many farms that are paying way below the minimum wage that is provided by the government," Ms Kambo says. "I've seen pay slips where women are taking home less than $US5 in a month."It is women like Esther, who lives in a small home near Lake Naivasha, who are often picking the roses that end up in our homes. The 32-year-old has a message for Australians who are buying bunches of flowers: "On the ground, we are very poor," she says.
"There has been an intention to improve the conditions of workers in the sector," says labour rights specialist Mary Kambo. "We've seen a few progressive growers or producers of flowers in the sector. But the scale of abuse is still so much that it overshadows the good." Sex work can be more lucrative, but it can also be difficult and sometimes dangerous. She breaks into tears as she recounts some of the difficult nights she has "survived." "One week a person can tell you, 'Let's go to my place,' and you go there maybe, you know, some people even murder people."
Many flowers have already been on a carbon-intensive journey to get here, and they'll again be stored in a temperature-controlled environment until they can be auctioned off. The auction house is working to introduce a new sustainability rating system that will assess the environmental impact of each product. "Now it's very hard to see what really is sustainable," says Mr Haasnoot. "But we hope that those insights will come within the coming years."
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