Practical Tips to Move the Sustainability Needle in Your Floral Shop

Episode 243: We recap the exciting session at Camp Clique last week and delve into a thought-provoking discussion with industry experts Bill McKinley AIFD from Texas A & M and Abby Chick, shop owner of Blakemore's Flowers in Harrisonburg, VA.

Join us as Bill and Abby share their insights on incorporating sustainability into floral design. They answer burning questions such as: What design mechanics can we adopt to move the sustainability needle in our craft? How can retail flower shops implement best practices on a daily/weekly basis to work towards a more sustainable future? Tune in to discover practical tips and innovative ideas that can help shape a greener, more sustainable floral industry.

Want to listen to the entire session:
Realistic Sustainability for Retail Florists

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:02

What best practices can be adapted in a retail flower shop on a daily, weekly basis to work toward sustainability.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda. Well, Lori, it's been a busy week. Oh my gosh, it has. It hasn't. Summer is over. School has started. Summer is over, even though we are under a heat advisory. Same. Yes, exactly. I heard on the radio this morning that uh we our heat advisory is going to be over on Thursday when a cool front comes in and it's going to be 97. Our cool front is going to come in, and so that should cool us down to 97. So woohoo! Wow. Gotta love Texas. Too hot. All right. Well, we have um we have a fun podcast, a really good one that uh actually started out as a camp click session, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yes, right. This was our camp click session on sustainability. So we thought this would be really good. We edited it down, of course, I because it was almost an hour, the webinar was because it was really great information, but we edited it down to a shorter version, and we had Bill McKinley and Abby Chick as our special guests, and they gave some really great ideas, thoughts, and ideas on sustainability in the floral industry. Yeah, yeah, it was really good. So I hope everybody enjoys it. As we all know, sustainability is like that buzzword, right? We're really all talking about it now. And if uh a recent quote from Forbes magazine said, sustainability is not an optional choice for business anymore. It's a strategic imperative shaping the practices and priorities of industries worldwide. Consumers are now more environmentally conscious, are demanding sustainable products and rewarding brands that prioritize eco-friendly practices. So I think that says a lot. You know, when we look at that, we know that it's not an option. And for the floral industry for years, we just felt like ah, what doesn't apply to us. It's easy to go forward and do what we've always done. But when we have to make changes, it gets a little bit more challenging. So we've asked Bill McKinley. Bill, thank you for being here. Bill is very involved in industry. Your depth of the industry, I think people should know if they don't already know you, right? You've worked with Floralife, you've been a flower shop owner, you're an educator, and you have so much knowledge in the industry, and you've seen a lot over the years.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Oh, I've seen a lot, yes. Thank you for inviting me to do this. This is exciting.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

And then we have Abby Chick, who really is a devoted flower shop owner and really to the retail segment. And Abby was the Mayash designer of the year talking about sustainability. So she's got a lot that she really works into her shop on a day-to-day basis that she can contribute that to the panel today. We're really excited to have both of you here. So let's talk a little bit about some of the things that are available. Ellie, maybe we can walk through this together before we have the questions.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

Yes. So we just we just wanted to give everybody kind of a background on things before we dive in. We don't have all the answers, right? That's why we invited some experts here. And that's why you are all here. And that's like kind of the whole thing with sustainability, right? It takes us all.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

This is a website. If you have not seen it or you're not familiar with it, sustainable.org. And it has a lot of really good information. And what I really wanted Ellie just to kind of go through these terms, because I think it's kind of eye-opening to know that there are so many different terms in this glossary that's that uh we talk about for sustainability because there are nine planetary boundaries. Did you know that? And then you can see alphabetically it goes through all the terms in this glossary.

SPEAKER_04 4:35

Yeah, we're not gonna make you memorize all these. You're not gonna have a test.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

There's just a few that, you know, there's a lot of talk about being carbon neutral. There's a lot of talk about carbon zero. But I guess I didn't realize that prop rotation really went into sustainability. And then we can just go on.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

It reminds me of cooler rotation in a way. Because, you know, first in, first out, and you're putting down on waste that way.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

And these Bill probably knows all this and gives tests on these, right, Bill?

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Not quite all of them, no.

SPEAKER_04 5:08

Okay. Um, so briefly I wanted to mention as you operate your own business with sustainable practices, you also want to look towards businesses that are obviously doing their part. So I just wanted to highlight a few businesses that I thought had some interesting things that they were doing. Accent decor, which you guys probably all know of. I was talking to Angelique, who is manager of partnerships. She mentioned that they ensure all of their partner factories are BCSP compliant, which is a big organization for workplace safety and health and environmental accreditation. And if the factories aren't BCSP compliant, they help them to get the appropriate accreditation. So get the factors in place. All of their cast aluminum products are made of recycled aluminum from India. And then they have smaller glass items from recycled glass. But they also do a ton of giving back to the community. If you look on their blog, they're constantly doing initiatives to give back to their local community, give back nationally, different organizations, even in Rwanda. So these are just things to keep in mind. It's like where you're putting your money, right? Are you putting your money in a place that you feel confident down the chain? And then this was interesting. I don't know how many of you remember the big thing this past Valentine's Day, where publications were posts were writing op-eds about not buying, they were like anti-flowers for Valentine's Day. And obviously, our industry was less than thrilled about this negative PR. And they just had this whole spin about how bad they were for the environment. In that article, I just found these points that I thought were interesting, which were in a rebuttal. SAF wrote a letter back to these publications and basically showing the facts. So emissions from the production and transportation of cut flowers from Columbia to Miami are significantly lower than most foods. And I think chocolate and coffee were brought up. It costs about the same as a cup of coffee or chocolate. And then we're gonna talk more about it, but Flora Verde, which is a certification for farms, reduced the consumption of their highly toxic pesticides by 99.7% and increased the biological controls by 600% in the past 10 years. And then the thing that we love the most is that these farms also employ hundreds of thousands of workers. Obviously, if they're floor verde certified, there's 46,000 workers, but across the board, they're supporting especially females who are head of households. And then these farms provide education, they provide, you know, doing their laundry, savings accounts, things like that, that are just so important. So it's not only about what you're taking away, it's about what you're moving forward and providing and building into the economy. So those were just some fun facts. If you didn't know, now you know. And then of course, we can't talk about others without talking about what we do at Flower Click as well. I think it's important that we're all doing our part. So just a few of the things within Flower Click, we do sell whole wholesale bouquets to you retailers. And with that, our partner farm is Flor Verde certified. And the majority of the employees are women that are providing for their families. And we got to go to the farm in Bogota last October, and it was just incredible to see there's no bouquet machines. These are all women making the bouquets by hand, employing them with a fair wage and all of that. In addition, our bouquets are made with recyclable sleeves. So that's one thing that we implemented a change on to kind of do our part. And then we participate in things like pedal it forward, which obviously makes people happier with flowers and spreads, spreads the power of flowers and builds into people. And then I know it might be silly, but I had to mention that we are a remote company, so we all work from home. And so we're not having any carbon emissions in our commute. Might sound silly, but it is it's something, right? It's a little bit of something. So those are just a few of the things that we do. Okay, and then we'll just flip through these little micro trends before we dig into the question. When I was at another conference, sorry, a lot of conferences going on, they were talking about these micro trends and how heavily they trend towards sustainability. One of them is called Petals with Purpose, and it emphasizes the importance of social responsibility that we all have within the floral industry and shows that it we can really have a positive impact within our individual communities. So there's all kinds of things you guys can look up. That's also the source of sustainablooms. You guys can look up exactly what goes into that. But one of the quotes that you have here, Vonda, is high-purpose brands will double their market value more than four times faster than low purpose brands. So it's about having a purpose and really leaning into that and believing in that and whatever that means for you might be different, right? We all have our unique missions that we have, but that's kind of the baseline is also to not hide it, to talk about what you believe in and the causes that you support. And then another one is floral community, which is collaborating with local growers, artisans, community community organizations, hosting community workshops, sponsoring local events, things like that. I know Abby Chick here is a big proponent of locally grown flowers. She's in an amazing area where she's got access to a lot of those good farms to do so. The last one here is charity blooms. It's pretty um self-explanatory. So participating with local charities, highlighting impact stories, and so you're really amplifying voices that way and supporting however you can through your business.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

I I just wanted you to be aware there are things we can do, right? And that's just as Ellie had said just a few minutes ago, is making those choices based on what per uh purchases we have. And there's really so much out there that you can look at and read those labels and see if that's something that you're passionate about and something that you can make a difference. Certified humane, certified organic, or gluten-free. We see all of these and it makes it easy to identify what it is that we want to be able to participate in. And then there's all the different floral ones that we are looking at, the Rain Florest Alliance and Ecuador, and there's all this history. This again is on that same website that all of these have come up with for an awareness as we're purchasing our fresh flowers from Colombia. And then something that you were talking about, the sustainable flowers, and where those from the different um agricultural practices that they're using. They have Ecuador and Colombia and Holland and uh California. And so we can see that all of these different entities that are supplying us with flowers have really a qualification that they're putting out there to make sure that we're being responsible when we're making these purchases.

SPEAKER_04 12:57

So now to the first question.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

This is the first question, and we're gonna direct this to start with Bill. And what what design mechanics are you teaching that you feel will help move the needle?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

First of all, I just want to say one of the philosophies that we're trying to take in uh higher education is to try to change some of the mindsets of people that you can have the beauty of flowers but also be earth-friendly. And I think sometimes people don't have that same it's one or the other. Having said that, in the classroom we do a lot of armatures, so we do a lot of structures, we do recycling of the containers, we give the students a ceramic container, it's a pretty nice container from X and Decor typically, but they have to bring it back. And if they don't bring it back, they get a little, you know, 50 cent plastic container for that week. Which sometimes is a prompt to get them to do what they want. In my advanced classes, I teach uh Kubari style or kubari-like designing. We're using sticks and twigs as wedges and uh things inside of a vase, which has the added advantage of well, the mechanic is cool. I mean, when you see it, you want to see it, so it's not something you try to hide. We try to reuse as much of our materials as possible. We do dish gardens with plants, but we don't unplant them and leave them in their pots, and then we use the sleeves from the from the flowers to stuff in between it to keep them stable in the basket or the container or whatever. Particularly helpful with our succulents because we put gravel on the top, and if you don't fill all that void, then you have a 50-pound container with all the gravel that goes down in between all the pots. So that's one of our sustainable things. I guess the experiential learning part of what we do here is also important in this sustainable aspect, in that we do a lot of events here on campus, and probably 80 to 90 percent of all of our events we uh strike and bring back either the full product, so either all of the flowers, but for sure the container, and reuse that either in the classroom or for a subsequent uh event. So it's using the same product over and over, maybe a couple of times, depends on what it is, which I think goes a long way in increasing that sustainability. I do have the advantage when I'm teaching, also I have a greenhouse on you've seen that, and I know you were drooling over what I was for sure. But I encourage using local not only cut flower markets and cut flower uh growers, but also uh hanging baskets and things like that that you can cut English ivy and uh and sword ferns and calatheas and those sorts of things, and then they grow back. With a greenhouse, that's much quicker, obviously. But I think outside use also we go out and forage, we call it, and judicious pruning of campus pitasporums and shrubs and elegis and those sorts of things. We're trying, it's it's sometimes difficult in the quantity of students we have. On average, we're we have about 120 to 140 students every week, and so it's not like I can grow enough material to produce enough for all of those students. So purchasing is still necessary.

SPEAKER_04 16:56

Abby, I want to also ask you this same question because you do a lot of teaching and as the sustainability design star.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

I love everything that Bill said. You know, for me, I always kind of keep reduction at the forefront of all of my practices. And as simple as it sounds, really doubling down on the P's and E's in design, the more I go back to foundational mechanics and just leaning into design principles and becoming a better designer, becoming more skilled at color theory, the less I rely on needing more. My very first move was 12 years ago when Hatomi Gilliam showed that you don't need to fill your entire container with a brick of foam. Just cut that in half, right? So if you're starting at the beginning of this, making these small incremental changes, now to where it was like everything I did was in chicken wire in a ceramic container. And then I started realizing that just by making a better ingredient choice, by getting two kinds of foliage or material that have good laterals that can kind of be spiraled and bound together with just the teeniest, tiniest piece of wire or a rubber band to create a supportive nest. And Vonda has heard my supportive texture, really supportive base. Yeah. That not only was it fast and efficient, and I didn't have to use a man-made product. I mean, this is the thing. Chicken wire is what better than foam, sure. Like, and I think we look at better than alternatives for certain needs, but that still has to be produced. So anything that you can find, like Bill said, a natural armature, something that's organic or naturally occurring, and you can use less of it. Like, I don't need to just unthoughtfully throw a half a pack of baker and uh pit into a vase to green it out, green it up, green it down. That's what's so many of us are stuck in that old mentality of like, oh, we'll just put more in it to make it look bigger. The more I invest in the design aspects of it. I think, and that's what I really try to teach people and pass that on is that learning how to become a better designer to work with less, you rely on less, and you can reduce your own footprint very easily just by doing that. I mean, in its simplest forms.

SPEAKER_04 19:49

Yeah, that's such a good point. Um, if anybody else has anything to chat in here regarding this question that they want to contribute, feel free to do so and I'll have Lori facilitate.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Ellie, we do have a question that I think goes back to Bill to further explain one of our clickers, Judy, asks to explain more about how leaving plants in pots versus repotting for a dish slash Eurogardens is more sustainable. She says if I repot, I know I recycle in the classic grower pots. I don't know if the end consumer will do so, but it's also important to be aware of what the consumer may know or do and shortcut the process for them because most will not. So, Bill, can you speak into that at all?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Sure. We we leave them in pots because uh oftentimes uh one of them uh doesn't make it as well as the rest of them. And if if one of them dies and they're all potted together, then you're uh digging up and possibly even throwing the whole thing away, as opposed to just replacing that one single pot that's in the larger basket or ceramic or whatever it happens to be. I think again it's a mindset that if the end consumer doesn't recycle, then maybe there needs to be a little tag or a little card or something that goes on the the design as it goes out that please recycle the container the and that might help.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah, good. Abby, I saw you nod. Something to add to that without getting too into the weeds here, but also what's really important to remember for anybody who's just starting to go down this path, because it can feel like drinking from a fire hose when you start looking into. To things is that we as florists um don't have the time, the expertise, the bandwidth to become experts on this. I cannot tell you the life end cycle of what just I use accent decor ceramics, right? I believe things that companies tell me, I believe what scientists tell me, but end of the day, none of us know the end life cycle carbon footprint on everything that's within our industry. And something else that I sort of beat my head against the wall was doggy compostable bags and compostable wrap for my packaging. And I think somebody had put in a question about this packaging your flowers when you wrap them. Ultimately, nothing is better. I try to educate my customers about these flowers that I'm sending you out with are going to live out of water for an hour. Please recut them. Because if I give you a compostable, you know, doggy poop bag thing wrapped around a wet paper towel around these stems, and that customer goes home and puts it in their trash can, do you know that it actually has a worse effect in a landfill than the plastic does? So it can get very complicated and far more complicated than a lot of us who are not scientists to solve these problems. And so when you get into this and you start splitting hairs between this and this, and I don't know what the right thing to do. A, know that you are not alone. You're not going crazy, and this is not easy to make decisions. Any one of us, you know, are all trying to uh make the best decisions for our family, for our community, and keeping that sort of front of mind, I think is important. I just wanted to kind of throw this in there as we really get into some of this, because there's not going to be a perfect, easy solution for every question that comes up.

SPEAKER_04 24:11

Next is also for you, Abby. This is a loaded question. What best practices can be adapted in a retail flower shop on a daily, weekly basis to work toward sustainability?

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Everything I do is filtered through the lens of profitability too. I'll be very honest with you about that. I'm trying to run a successful business because I support many families here, you know. But I don't like running my wholesalers down here every day. I also don't like ordering a bunch of flowers that are going to go to waste, right? And throwing away a bunch of flowers. So I really try to only buy what is needed, get really creative. I try to source in the local season from everyone who's in my backyard here. We have a lot of flower farms here in Virginia. So I am fortunate. A lot of people live in urban cities across the country, that that is not an option for them. And so you have to keep in mind that that's not everybody's reality. But because I can do that, I try to do that, educating my customers. What I said too about going back to color theory and principles and elements, that's helped me reshape my design style and what I put on my website so that they might see a carnation and a rose in an image. But because my designs rely maybe more on the color story or the shape of the design, my customers are so used to knowing that they're not getting exactly what's in that picture and they're okay with it. So I can make those seasonal changes and really support my local farms during the season where they have a lot to offer. Those are some changes that I made. Another one, again, and you know, we we can't have this discussion without talking about foam. I use it in my shop. Am I trying to reduce the amount that I use it? Yes, I have been for 12 years for my own personal reasons, you know. So one of the things that I stopped doing was I stopped making funeral baskets. It was an expensive plastic basket that I, in particular, I didn't like the way that it looked. And it was something that I thought, okay, well, this funeral basket goes to the funeral and then it gets left out at the grave and then it gets trashed. I understand that to a certain extent about a spray or an easel, or at least some of those can be reused. But I thought this would be a really easy first step change to make where I could start selling a ceramic container and make the argument to my clients that it would be really nice for someone to be able to take this home. I can make it just as big and showy and grand as the traditional piece that you're used to seeing. But now it can have a second life. We can put it in something that somebody could enjoy and keep, or we could even donate it to if there's a hospital that was taking care of the patient or a nursing home or even the family's church. So that was a really easy first step. And that's something that florists all the time asks me. They're like, What do you do about funeral baskets? And I say, Well, I don't make them. They're like, Oh, so you don't do funeral work? I'm like, no, I do. And I also know how to make completely compostable natural casket sprays. There are a hundred percent difficult challenges there. Can I do it? Yes. Are there certain things that you can't do when someone asks for that? There are trade-offs. There are flowers you cannot use. There are shapes and styles that you cannot do if you decide not to use floral foam in a standing spray. So everything is about, like I said, balance and choices. You can make these, you can make the decisions for your business about what you're willing to give up and how you want to approach that with your customers. Because there definitely is give and take. You don't just get to say, Oh, I get to do all the funeral work in my town and I get to be completely green. I've yet to have a conversation with any florist who has had the perfect solution to this problem. I am always looking for it though. It doesn't stop me from trying, it doesn't stop me from supporting people in their efforts, you know, and I'm I'm ready for it. We just haven't gotten there yet. Sorry. You asked me a loaded question. What did you expect to get? That was really good.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Uh Bill, do you have anything to add to that?

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Well, I might just say a couple things. Oftentimes I get the question from retailers andor students about sustainability, and they're just overwhelmed with what it is that's being thrust at us. And I always just say, okay, choose two or three things and make them work. You don't have to go all the way to the other extreme. Just choose two or three, make them work, then move on to another two or three and make those work. So it's it's not all at once, it should be sort of a a stepped process. So start with uh instead of using uh a half a block of foam, use a third of a block in your arrangement and and then fill in around it with something else. Unfortunately, I use a lot of blocks, but something that is inexpensive and and usable. So I think that's just an overall view of of the retail segment is they're resistant because they feel like there's just I can't do this. There's there's too many things. Just choose two or three.

SPEAKER_04 29:58

That's a great starting point for sure. Master those. Start with one. Yeah, start with two or three.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Transition takes time, and it's not like I stopped doing funeral baskets overnight. That was a process. I've owned my shop for 12 years. I haven't bought a plastic handled funeral basket in five years. But it took me that long to, you know, because the minute you just say, No, I can't, I'll be very honest with you, the general public, just like with everything else in your business, you know, branding and marketing, making them care about your company. If there's five guys down the street who will do it, and you just say, no, I don't do that, and that's the end of discussion, they'll just take their business elsewhere. So you can be a florist who stands on every principle who's out of business, or you can be a florist who works to take her time, keeping the trust of her customers and help them grow and change with you. And so taking it one or two things at a time is absolutely the best advice.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

Okay. Shall we move on to the next question?

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Is it realistic to think that a full service flower shop can compete and function without the use of floral foam?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

I think it is, but I know there's this is a big buck. Uh it depends on the clientele styles and expectations of your uh customers on whether or not that is feasible. And I do want to say that I use a lot of floral foam. I like using floral foam. I don't think I want to not use floral foam in the situations where it's necessary. Especially now that the max foam is uh biodegradable, that makes me feel better. Even though it's a year or 18 months or something like that. But at least it's not gonna be there for the next three millenniums in the landfills. So I think there's a lot of factors. I I don't know that it is actually in my mind practical to say I'm not ever gonna use floral foam in most situations. But Abby, you're gonna have a much better perspective of this since I'm not in retail anymore.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

And I I kind of agree with you completely. I but I think the biggest factor is your location. I was at North Carolina State. I was at a convention this weekend, and I met a lovely designer from Asheville, North Carolina. And Asheville is famously a very progressive, you know, naturally self-proclaimed hippie-dippy town of wonderful, artistic, beautiful people. And she works at a flower shop, a full-service flower shop that does not use any floral foam. And I asked her, I said, Do you guys do funerals? Because again, I'm always interested. And she said, No, my boss says we can't do them. We were talking about the ins and outs of that. But I also know that if I got together with every florist in a 30-mile radius here and we all made a pact not to use it, I bet you we could all run our businesses without it. Because if nobody's using it, if there's literally no option for anybody to get the standard quo, then yeah, we could probably change our little area pretty quickly to say, well, you can't get a standard casket spray anymore. We can do wrapped bouquets, we can do things in, you know, the fiber floral medium, you know, the basalt rock. You know, there are things that you could do that would be different. But again, is that realistic? Every person who works out of their home or does things on the side or buys things off of the internet, you know, would there maybe just be people that said, well, I'll just get it online and do it myself then? You know, I think is that a realistic answer? I know that in the UK and in Canada, I think Canada is also set up a little bit better with some of their systems within their government and just for composting for flowers and all that kind of stuff. I think that there are places within this country that it is more feasible to operate a business without it. And a lot of it does depend on your clientele in your in that area and what their ideals are. And I think there is a a correlation there with progressive ideals as far as if you look at the demographics of it. So I'm not gonna say no because I don't know all the things. Like I said, I've yet to meet any florist that does funeral work as a major part of their business and does not use it. Yeah, I think that it's something that as florists who care about this, we want to make changes. Unfortunately, a lot of these walls that we run into are part of systems that that are bigger than us. Anybody who's truly in the sort of ecosphere of sustainability has kind of pushed that tag aside because there's so much greenwashing behind something being biodegradable. The gold standard now is really is it reusable? Is it compostable? Just because something says that it's biodegradable, that does not mean that it's good. I I called my dad. He was a water treatment operator, basically, when everybody really was starting to go into how to dispose of your foam water. I called my dad because that was his expertise was cleaning water for 50 years in his career. He told me everything there is to know. I'm like, do I throw it on the train tracks? Like, where's the safest place? If I throw it down the drain, is it going into our water split? He talked to me about there's not just one place that all of our water goes. It's much more if there's places where groundwater runoff. And so, again, you know, there's so much into it that on the surface it's very hard about hard for any of us to find the right answers when we start.

SPEAKER_04 36:21

What did he what was the final answer?

SPEAKER_00 36:25

I dump it outside somewhere where there's no runoffs into like streams or anything down, you know, where I'm at, it's such a little amount. I have one bucket where I do all of my foam soaking, but I don't do it down the sink. I mean, there's as many microplastics going into my body from the plastic water bottle I'm drinking out of than, you know, what I'm throwing down the sink and foam water. But again, everybody's gonna make the best choices that they can give the information and what's feasible for them.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

One more question. What packaging do you recommend, if any, for protecting fresh floral arrangements when they're being delivered in like cold, snowy winter climates, like sustainable packaging?

SPEAKER_00 37:08

To be very honest, at a major holiday where we've had freezing temperatures, like at Valentine's Day, everything got a plastic bag.

unknown 37:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

And I wasn't happy about it. Every arrangement that went out of here had a plastic bag over it. It is something that I think that had I thought about it, had I been more prepared earlier in the year, you know, and most of these changes that you make take more thought. It takes time. So don't beat yourself up if you're up against the clock on a retail arrangement. You know, we don't have the benefit of time in our in our job. So some of this stuff you think of like, oh man, you know what? Next Valentine's Day. And again, I'm being reminded as I'm talking about this now that I'm like, oh yeah, I need to look for a better solution to that because there's so much that you need to do. There are obviously biodegradable options out there. I don't know how well they work. Um, to be honest, I don't even know how well the plastic bag works. It's kind of like one of those things I've always just done because it was like something I was taught to do 20 years ago. And I just was like, well, okay, that's a wish and a prayer that it keeps the flowers warm. On not a major holiday, I'm pretty sure they're plastic, but they're like those silver insulated packing blanket material things. We wrap them up, take them inside the building, and then we take that back out with us. Now, the thought is if the customer takes those flowers home, they're likely going to freeze, you know. But again, where I'm at, we're not in like North or South Dakota where it's getting like frigid temperatures. I I'm not the expert on that.

SPEAKER_04 38:56

I also think it's easier if you're somebody who doesn't want to use foam. It's an easier concept if that's just the way that you've been taught. If you're a younger florist and like growing up in that, you know, like I think it's hard to undo what we've been taught for 20 plus years and the habits. So um, and it's little by little, obviously. That's why we're all here on this call is to be better and improve as best we can. But I do think one perspective of this question, it it might be realistic for somebody who that's all they know is not using foam.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Wow, that was so good, Lori. And there's so much more, but I kind of had to cut it off because you know, we don't want to go an hour or more on a podcast.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

So you have your boundaries there. You know what was interesting. Um, you know, part every camp click session. My my job when I'm not presenting is to do the answer, field the questions in the chat. There were so many during this whole thing. And so that tells us that this is on the forefront of everybody's mind.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

Yeah, for sure. So if you want, click on the link below and you can see and listen to the full version of this.

SPEAKER_03 40:16

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa. We look forward to seeing you next week.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

So please come back and join us to discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.