Florada reached a milestone this month with our involvement in the first circular economy startup cohort led by City of Sydney, Fishburners and Boomerang Labs.
From what began as a personal "war on waste" journey for our Founder Dhani D'Arcy in 2020, three years on, Florada has gained recognition from some of Sydney's biggest change-makers for its contribution to the circular economy.
Businesses like ours that set out to provide solutions to address global issues like climate change and biodiversity loss, do so by following the 3 R's—reduce, reuse, recycle.
What we know?
- People love flowers, both giving and receiving them—the cut flower industry has a current market value of $33 billion annually.
- Individuals can create positive impact, but we believe significant change requires a shared responsibility across the supply chain.
Our business focusses on three areas of the cut flower industry that are causing unnecessary environmental harm.
Key problems:
- Large amounts of greenhouse gases associated with the global flower industry created by long haul flights for imported flowers. Imported flowers pose a biosecurity risk, requiring chemical treatments & fumigation also posing a risk to the environment, and our health.
- Massive amounts of single-use plastic packaging across the industry and a large dependency on toxic products such as oasis or floral foam.
- Lack of awareness and regulation and large scope for greenwashing. Currently no mandate for country of origin flower labelling. Being a “natural” product people often assume flowers are harmless.
Our solutions:
- We keep it local—we follow seasons, not trends and cut carbon emissions by providing 100% Australian grown flowers to our customers, with at least 50% sourced from farms within 100kms of our Sydney studio.
- We’ve designed out waste—we offer gifting, without the garbage. Flowers are short lived, so our packaging is too! We avoid single-use products, no plastic wrap, ribbons or floral foam—a toxic product used by florists for the last 50 years, used for events that often only last a few hours.
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We’re a voice for change—we’re part of the global slow movement and support the call for country of origin labeling for cut flowers in Australia.
In our third year of operation, we have grown and learnt so much and continue to be here for people who want to create change, one bloom at a time!