September 26, 2023
Hello Floral Members!
I hope you are getting excited about the Global Show, because I sure am. We know that hotels are very full so if any of you are having trouble getting a room please call the toll free number at 866-774-0457. They have rooms still (or they did at the time this was written!)
This month I met with colleagues in the US from other Floral Associations in Phoenix at SAF. I saw some of you there! What a beautiful place. One of the major topics we discussed was sustainability. I will tell you, that at some level, every company is going to need to deal with more and more questions about sustainability. Industry-wide messaging will not only help you all in tackling those questions but will help us appear as a united front. While we don’t have the messaging at this time, we’re working to come up with a unified message we can all use that indicates “we are working on it.”
Packaging, of course, is one of the top topic with sustainability so, if you have already viewed the Webinar that IFPA put together with leading Floral packaging companies, GREAT! If you have not, I urge you to see what these 5 companies are doing to change sleeves and pot covers so we can move to a better future. Little steps are the best way to climb the mountain, one at a time. Please make a difference for the future and your children and your children’s children, etc. You can catch up with the webinar here.
We know that some say it will cost more to implement these changes with packaging, however once everyone is moving in the same direction, we get competition and things get cheaper. The cost is actually very small if we compare it to the cost of not doing anything. THAT would be detrimental to the world and your business.
As we make these changes, it’s important for us to measure our impact. If you are collecting data, please feel free to share these with us so we can see a total change in our environmental footprint across our membership.
There are many that can calculate this, and we can let members know these changes add up.
- Reduction of virgin plastic or eliminating this all together
- Reduction in the length of your sleeve or mil (thickness) of the plastic used
- Box size standards so there is one box size coming from the farms
- Bucket recycling to use in other items or a way to clean them correctly so they can be reused
- UPC stickers must be industrial recyclable by 2025
- Stop mixing plastics in a bale. These are difficult to breakdown so 1 dump truck per minute is ending up in the ocean
- We should have a task force coming out of the Volunteer committee that can help us set guidelines on what Europe is doing. We should work towards that.
These are just a few and I am hoping a Floral Task Force for Sustainability (I just made that up – but if you’re interested, reach out!) will come up with all the guidelines we should strive for. Products are being taken off the shelves in some regions and we find that regulations and standards like this tend to expand. We have to be ready to ensure we can scale up to compliance and not have floral taken off the shelves!
Another interesting thing I found out from one of our members is this: Technology can be profitable!
Business solution providers are no longer talking about ROIs over 20 years. In the next 3-5 years there are ways to retain the employees you have and use them more efficiently so you don’t have to keep hiring so many for the future and holidays. Labor is getting harder and harder to come by so we need to get smarter and smarter to stay profitable. It is coming…Artificial Intelligence! Embrace it and find ways to make your company more efficient for the future. There are all kinds of ways that this will work in small ways and later in bigger ways to make your business stronger. If you’re curious about learning more, I highly recommend you attending the State of the Industry presentation at the Global Show on Thursday morning, and the Innovation Hub on the show floor.
Can’t wait to see you in Anaheim!
Deb