Happy Valentine's Day!!! How Much Do Those Flowers Really Cost?

Photo: Home Depot

How many readers are running out to the stores today to get flowers for their loved ones on Valentine's Day?  Before heading to the flower shop, read the article below, and decide if that is the best decision based on the cost to both yourself and the environment.



Whenever Valentine's Day comes around, I cannot help but have the urge to buy flowers and chocolates for my wife.  The only problem is that she has issues with both.  Starting with chocolate, I recently (we have been married for 12 years) found out that if she consumes chocolate in the late afternoon to evening -- it will turn into a nightmare.  A fight will ensure, accusations will fly with a false basis, aggressive emotions will fly. 



Wow! 



Yes, that is for real.  Some people (my wife included) have a strong reaction to chocolate in the late afternoon, which sets them off into a new dimension.  I have tried the experiment over and over for the last few months -- sure enough, the results are consistent.  Therefore, eating chocolate in the evening is a no go.



Flowers are next.  Why not buy flowers?  Upon meeting my wife and purchasing flowers, my wife said to me: Why did you buy me dead flowers? 


I responded: They are beautiful, like yourself?


To which she replied: They are beautiful but dead.  Why not plant flowers that are alive and will continue to grow?



I will admit that at first, I was thrown back by the comment.  After considering her argument, she was correct.  Upon cutting the flowers from the stem connected to the root, the flower is starting to die.  Consumers will often preserve life for a short while with vitamin-based powder solutions, but ultimately, the flowers will die.



With this thinking in mind, I have changed my ways.  Now, I buy a living plant to keep in the backyard.  That is, of course, when she is reinventing the garden.  For the rest of the flower lovers in the world, keep the following above and below thoughts in mind when receiving flowers in the future.


Back to my original question: How much do flowers really cost?



That question might seem obvious.  Just look up the cost of a dozen roses on Google, and a vendor's price will be shown?  Right?  Not really.  The actual value is considering the entire lifecycle of the roses. In a recent article on Vox, the reader is taken through the journey of flowers from South America to the United States:

When we talk about flowers and sustainability, the biggest issue is how flowers get from their point of origin to retailers across the country. During most of the year, flowers are shipped on passenger planes, Amy Stewart, an investigative reporter and author of the 2007 book Flower Confidential, told me. “They’re put on planes that are going anyway.” But hundreds of cargo planes full of flowers fly from the Andes to Miami in the month before Valentine’s Day. According to the Post, 30 cargo jets fly from Colombia to Miami every day in the three weeks leading up to the big day and a similar amount fly out from Ecuador, amounting to more than 15,000 tons of flowers delivered in less than a month.

These flights have important consequences for the rest of the planet. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, comprising 28 percent of the country’s total emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Just over a quarter of US transportation emissions come from freight over air, land, and sea. Growing aviation demand, for both passengers and cargo, helped fuel an increase in emissions in the United States last year, reversing years of decline. This is significant, as greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane trap heat in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Demand for roses isn’t solely to blame for this crisis, but the transportation network needed to bring delicate blossoms across oceans has an outsized environmental footprint. The International Council on Clean Transportation crunched the numbers last year and estimated that those three weeks of flower delivery flights burn approximately 114 million liters of fuel, emitting approximately 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Once the roses land in Miami, they get fashioned into bouquets before being loaded onto refrigerated delivery trucks that will drive across the country. The flowers need to be kept cold every step of the way, otherwise they’ll wilt. “Believe it or not, flowers are for the most part shipped with no water at all,” Stewart told me. “The key to keeping flowers alive in transit is temperature, humidity, and the mix of oxygen and CO2.”

This refrigeration causes trucks to burn more fuel, meaning they have greater carbon emissions than their non-refrigerated counterparts. On average, refrigerated trucks use 25 percent more fuel than non-refrigerated ones, Michael Ayres, managing director of the mobile refrigeration company the Dearman Group, told Take Part in 2015. Plus, as Andy Murdock wrote for Vox in 2017, most trucks in the US still run on diesel fuel, which produces more air pollutants than gasoline.

All of these emissions have a compounding effect. Carbon dioxide emissions in particular have been the biggest contributor to climate change since 1750, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. That’s largely because of the way CO2 stays in the atmosphere. Unlike methane, which leaves the atmosphere in about a decade, and nitrous oxide, which takes about a century to break down, carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years. That means that a lot of the carbon dioxide that was released into the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution, for example, still lingers today. And instead of reducing these emissions, we just keep adding more.

The numbers are staggering in the above description.  Just the mere fact that flowers are shipped that far (outside of the country) is staggering.  I did not ever really think of the entire travel of flowers from their origin to the doorstep of my house.  This story calls into question the journey of goods from all ranges of products.


Where do products come from?


What is the total carbon footprint of the product that you just purchased?


I am in no way advocating that no one buys flowers.  But thinking about the total carbon footprint might just have a consequence on your next purchase.



Happy Valentine's Day!!!!



Index of past blog sites:

1) Dimensional Analysis Of Statistics And Large Numbers - Index Of Blog Posts


2) Science Topics, Thoughts, and Parameters Regarding Science, Politics, And The Environment!