Ever opened up a bouquet of flowers and realised that most of what you received was packaging?
At Botany we’ve developed an environmentally-focused set of best practices to ensure this never happens to you!
Here’s how we’re leading the way in sustainable online flower delivery.
No Plastics, Ever!
We’re 100% committed to this rule. In fact, this forms the basis of all our practices at Botany. We have eliminated from our business not only the plastic that you see (the wet pack bag, cellophane, stickers, acrylic ribbon etc on your bouquet), but also the hidden plastics in the floral industry – the single-use sleeves that most of the bunches purchased at market come in; the ones that are removed and tossed before your flowers are displayed in a store.
The statistics of plastic waste produced in Australia are truly frightening. Every single year we create 660 thousand tonnes of it, and we know the floral industry is currently a big contributor. So we say no to plastic sleeves and all the other trash that comes with wrapped bouquets.
I recently received a statistic from a local grower that had cut down their use of plastic sleeves by 60%, which is incredible, as they had been using 900 every week. With 60 cut flower stall holders at the wholesale market alone, if this is the average amount of sleeves per grower, per week, you can see why we are in big trouble with our waste.
Rest assured, none of those sleeved bunches will ever make it into our studio.
Compost Friendly Flowers
We choose our flowers wisely and do the leg work for you. Our flowers come from farms all over Victoria, from the Dandenong ranges to Gisborne, Daylesford, Ballarat, Phillip Island, and the Surf Coast. These farms grow their blooms naturally, and sourcing locally means you will never see a chemically dipped, imported bloom in your arrangement!
When your blooms are past their best, simply pop them in your compost, worm farm or green waste, and reuse or upcycle your glass vase. Or, return it back to us undamaged, and we'll reuse it in another order (and give you a discount for your trouble!). As a last resort, glass can be 100% recycled, which is why all Botany arrangements come in glass.
Circular Waste
The majority of our green waste is composted , and once it’s broken down we use it on our home garden to return to the soil. This creates a completely circular system of green waste, saves money on fertiliser for the garden, and means our business deals with waste on site and responsibly, reducing the load on our local waste management.
The cardboard that our products and vases come in is reused to send out your products from our Local Store. No fancy, branded packaging for us, just reusing what we have so you can reuse it too!
Any products that we stock from fellow small businesses come in recyclable or reusable packaging, including glass jars and bottles, or plain paper + foil wrapping.
Compostable Tags
Our beautiful flower arrangements come delivered with a paper tag so you know where your flowers have come from and how to make them last. We chose Black Rainbow to create these tags for us so we could align ourselves with a like-minded company.
Our flower tags are printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper that is made in Australia. The inks are organic based, non-toxic vegetable inks and manufacturing is 100% solar powered. These tags can be safely composted along with the rest of your arrangement.
Responsible Deliveries
By creating an earlier cut-off for same day deliveries and not offering immediate turn around times, we can plan our delivery run more efficiently. This means we only go to each suburb once a day rather than driving back and forth across Melbourne, meaning less petrol is used and less emissions created through deliveries.
On top of this we also donate $1 from every delivery to Greenfleet, who use the donations to restore bio-diverse native forests in Australia and New Zealand, which help offset our carbon emissions.
You - our wonderful customers!
Finally, and most importantly, your support helps to create a bigger change for floristry and the cut flower industry. Our choices as consumers have always influenced trends for business, whether we realise it or not. With every referral, share and purchase of our beautiful flowers you are helping to drive change in the best direction.
Without all of you we could not accomplish such a positive impact for our industry. As always, we appreciate all your support - thank you again for being awesome humans.