Carbon BigFoot: Looking for Green in Your Flower Purchases
It’s not often that you can do something genuinely good that also feels personally indulgent. At Heinau, we’ve got just that unusual and winning combination for you.
You already know that our flowers are luxurious, beautiful and uniquely long lasting. You’ve marveled at the selection of vivid colors and taken advantage of our ability to create distinctive arrangements that range from elegant to whimsical. And you continue to be surprised that the blooms remain naturally soft and supple month after month.
In the midst of all that, you may have overlooked the fact that enjoying Heinau Flowers also allows you to make a significant contribution to the Greening of our shared environment.
It’s true that “green” has become one of those buzz words that clever marketers attach to everything from windowpanes to potato chips. But in it’s truest form, it means measurably reducing the carbon footprint your activities generate.
We can help you do that in a significant way.
Think for a minute about what’s “hidden behind the curtain” when you buy a bunch of fresh-cut flowers at your local florist, supermarket or roadside stand. Chances are those flowers were grown in South America. Flowers are the #1 perishable import into Miami, and almost 90% of the 4.5 billion fresh-cut flowers imported into the United States every year come into Miami, where they are repackaged for delivery to wholesalers. Every single day, at least 40,000 cases of perishable flowers arrive at Miami International Airport.
Talk about a carbon footprint! Those cases of flowers are loaded into refrigerated trucks at the farms in Ecuador and Colombia, then loaded onto cargo planes for immediate shipment by air, then unloaded into refrigerated trucks and delivered to refrigerated warehouses. Then the planes fly south again to pick up more loads. The environmental impact (and cost) of all that jet fuel and all that refrigerant is staggering.
Figuring out how you, together with Heinau, can minimize this footprint is a simple calculation. Most businesses and many homeowners buy perishable flowers every week, tossing last week’s in the trash, because they understand their value to the ambiance. If you switch to a Heinau Flowers arrangement, you won’t have to replace it for approximately 51 weeks (maybe longer). That means you’re reducing your personal consumption of jet fuel and refrigerant related to flower purchases by 98%!
If this issue is something you care about – if you have changed the kinds of light bulbs you use or recycle those pesky plastic water bottles, for example – Heinau now gives you a way to measurably contribute while still indulging yourself in the luxury of beautiful flowers every day. Do good, feel good, all in the same package.
