A New York Times Valentine's Day opinion piece discouraged flower giving for the sake of the environment because while the "massive cut-flower industry — valued at $34 billion in 2019 — isn’t the most environmentally criminal of all commercial enterprises … it’s far from benign."
"Fortunately, there are many ways to say, ‘I love you’ that don’t also say, ‘Eh, I don’t really care that much about the planet,'" Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer states in her article, "I Love You, Too, but Let’s Skip the Roses."
"I’m a big fan of love letters and walks in the moonlight, myself," she added.
She admitted the news "may be engendering a certain amount of despair," and pondered if there is "anything left that we’re allowed to view with unalloyed joy? If not a bouquet of bright flowers in the dead of February, then what?"
Instead of flowers from Mother Earth, Renkl suggests paper flowers if you are set on giving flowers or even a "domestic houseplant," but she warned that option still has similar problems to cut flowers like pesticides, water use and transportation.
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"But there’s still a big difference between domestically grown houseplants and imported flowers, and not just in the relative carbon costs of transportation," she added. "Houseplants aren’t discarded two days after Valentine’s Day."
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Renkl argued that "the very best environmental alternative to a bouquet of imported flowers probably isn’t a potted plant or even paper flowers," but a local flower farm that uses regenerative farming principles.
She even promotes a flower Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where "Customers provide the farmer with a reliable source of income, and the farmer provides a reliable source of fresh, in-season flowers."
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While it "might cost a little more" and "it’s easier to grab a plastic-wrapped bouquet from the grocery store," it takes more thought and planning "to send flowers — or plants and paper flowers — another way."
"If you really need to save money or time, it’s a lot faster and a lot cheaper to write a heartfelt love letter and go for a walk in the moonlight," she concluded. "But if you want to give your beloved a botanical gift, why not make it a gift to the planet, too?"
