Green Florist

Naturally you would think that a florist would be a green company but that is not necessarily the case. A flower shop can easily be a very wasteful place if a few steps are not taken to prevent it.
The biggest way that a florist can be environmentally friendly is to recycle. Every day flowers are shipped all over the world in cardboard boxes. On an average day your local flower shop will get two to three boxes of flowers in. By the end of the week you are looking at ten to fifteen boxes. This number is significantly higher on holidays. Each box also has news paper inside to help protect the flowers. If someone doesn’t separate these recyclables out they just end up in the trash with all of the stems and old flowers. At Payne and Morrison Florists in Phoenix we have had a system in place for many years to help this process. We have a cardboard table out back that all boxes are stacked on. These boxes are broken down and put into a recycle dumpster that we pay for. We also have paper only cans by the flower receiving station, and by the office. All of the shipping news paper, office paper and the paper that plants come wrapped in goes into these trash cans to be recycled. Another thing that can be recycled by a florist is glass. Not just broken glass in the shop, but good vases as well. If a guy buys his wife flowers for their anniversary, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and her birthday, that is a minimum of four vases a year. This doesn’t sound like a problem at first but in just a few years and you end up with a couple of cabinets full of vases. A lot of people bring their vases back in so that we can reuse them. A few regular customers will bring them in a box at a time.
We are also looking into new ways to help us be just a little more green. New types of floral foam and other products that we use in the store are coming out to help us with this. We recently had a power regulator installed to help save energy at the store. This regulator should help the store run more efficiently, especially our coolers with summer just around the corner.

Please visit our website at www.payneandmorrison.com .