Is the carbon footprint of UK grown artisan flowers really lower than imported blooms?
One of the motivations of flower farmers for growing and selling in their local area is to supply flowers that have a lower impact on the environment than those available elsewhere. We think long and hard about the detail of what we do and make careful decisions about how we grow, the cultivation practices we use, if and how we deliver, what tools and equipment we use and how we wrap our flowers. But how do we know if any of this makes a difference?
Research into the UK cut flower industry is scant, with the most relevant report an MSC dissertation written by Rebecca Swinn ( a summary by Angela Coulton can be found here ). Rebecca Swinn compared the carbon footprint of a typical bouquet of flowers and a similar quantity of UK grown flowers, which were then revisited with more accurate composition, finding that
5 Kenyan roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 31.132 Kg Co2
5 Dutch roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 32.252 Kg CO2
5 outdoor grown UK snapdragons + 3 UK lily + 3 UK alstromeria – 3.287 Kg CO2
15 stems mixed outdoor UK grown flowers, grown and sold locally (eg to Booths supermarket, Lancashire) – 1.71 Kg CO2
Mill Pond Flower Farm Carbon Audit
I’ve been growing cut flowers for sale for 11 years in the Scottish borders, delivering locally and have always focused on making as low an impact on our environment as possible. The Scottish Government are currently offering funding for farmers to undertake a Carbon Audit so I thought I’d take advantage of the offer and have one completed on our flower farm, to see how we compared to others and to look for improvements. We were contacted by email and supplied some information ahead of time, then there was a visit from an auditor and finally we provided them with a list of additional data. The auditor’s job was to measure and interpret the data and provide us with some recommendations for action.
To give a bit of background before the big reveal, Mill Pond Flower Farm operates on a 4 acre site comprised of
1 acre under cultivation -
Permanent planting beds 363m2
Rotation crops beds 88m2
Cover crop bed 90 m2
2 x polytunnels 180m2
1 acre under water
2 x acres trees, hedges & grassland
We use green manures, mulches and some horse manure in our cultivation. Our plants are grown with minimal soil inversion, the only digging is to plant bigger items and remove large perennial weeds. Equipment used is mainly hand tools or electric and rechargable. We supply primarily wholesale to florists, with some arranged weddings, delivering using a diesel van. Electricity is purchased from a renewable electricity supplier.
The carbon audit found that our Farm Carbon Footprint is 0.27kgCO2 per 1 KG of farm product.
For every 1 kg of flowers and foliage that we produce and deliver, we create 0.27kgCO2
What does this mean? Is it good or bad?
This figure is created so that it can be compared to other activity across a range of scenarios. Unfortunately there were no other artisan flower farms in the system to compare against. However, a comparison to the figures for flowers already mentioned is enlightening. The figures are of different things, our measurement is in kgCO2 per kilogram of flowers while the ones in Rebecca Swinn’s study were per bouquet. I popped to a supermarket and weighed a few similar sized bouquets to compare and they ranged from 350g to 600g including wrapping ( I really didn’t want to buy them just for this blog).
If we accept that a bouquet as described in the study is approximately 500g, these are the figures to compare:
5 Kenyan roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 31.132 Kg Co2
5 Dutch roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 32.252 Kg CO2
5 outdoor grown UK snapdragons + 3 UK lily + 3 UK alstromeria – 3.287 Kg CO2
15 stems mixed outdoor UK grown flowers, grown and sold locally 1.71 Kg CO2 (eg to Booths supermarket, Lancashire)
Mill Pond Flower Farm mixed flowers and foliage 500g 0.13 KG CO2
That’s quite a comparison!
Put another way, a comparative bunch of flowers produced on a windy Scottish hillside produces a carbon footprint that is just
0.41 % of that of 5 Kenyan roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila
0.40% of that of 5 Dutch roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila
3.95% of that of 5 outdoor grown UK snapdragons + 3 UK lily + 3 UK alstromeria
7.6% of that of 15 stems mixed outdoor UK grown flowers, grown and sold locally
What’s next?
While that’s quite a startling finding, the whole point of completing a Carbon Audit is to look for ways to reduce our carbon footprint. The recommendations for action were
Reduce purchased compost - we only use seed compost and have some of our own in preparation
Analyse nutrients in the soils
Use no inversion practices whenever possible
Consider renewable energy - we already use a renewable tariff but are planning DIY solar thermal and micro-hydro
Keeping the polytunnels clean allows solar heat to be utilised better
Accurately monitor energy use and identify opportunities to reduce energy use
Identify ways of reducing diesel usage - our van use is the most difficult issue as we’re really rural and electric vehicles aren’t currently viable for our location. We have reduced our delivery area but this does also reduce our customer base significantly.
It’s been a very interesting process and we’ve learned a lot about what data is useful in measuring our impact. The points raised in the recommendations are all ones that we knew might be issues and were looking for workable solutions.
The biggest surprise has been the scale of the difference between the carbon footprint of our flowers and others available in the UK. Our growing practices and the decisions we make on a day to day basis mean that our flowers really produce massively lower emissions, plus they’re beautiful, long lasting, pesticide free and scented. A single banana has a carbon footprint of 0.08kgCO2 and for the same emissions you could have a big bunch of our flowers. I’m going for the flowers every time!