Valentine's Day is coming---another commercialized event that makes greeting card, candy and flower vendors happy indeed. What an unromantic comment from someone who thinks a moonlight champagne picnic on the beach and romp in the surf is a stolen tryst moment even with a partner that has been around for years. I DO love Valentine’s even as I disdain its commercialism. I love romance, celebrations, and the color pink so Valentine’s works for me. But before you or I celebrate Valentine’s, I’d like us to smell the roses. Well, I would smell them if I could. Can you recall the last time you purchased a bouquet of roses that smelled like roses?

Unfortunately, the reasons for this are not pretty. For Valentine’s Day alone, Americans import more than 120 million roses, most of them from South American farms where normal procedures call for fumigating greenhouses with a range of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides (sometimes with workers still inside) before submerging the flowers in preservatives to keep them from rotting during shipment. Such practices are taking their toll on the workers who must handle these toxic chemicals daily. Cut flowers are big business. The U.S. floral market is a $20 billion-a-year industry with Mother's Day and Valentine’s Day celebrations accounting for the bulk of it. The vast majority of the 4 billion flower stems sold in the United States every year come from Latin America, countries such as Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

However, there is a way to enjoy our Valentine flowers while taking care of the workers and the planet at the same time. Fair Trade certification of flowers is a guarantee that growers meet strict social and environmental standards; that workers receive fair wages and protection from pesticides, that growers are taking steps towards sustainability and that the community is benefiting directly from your purchases (http://www.transfairusa.org/).

Veriflora is America’s first comprehensive sustainability certification program for the floral and potted plant industries and has been approved by Scientific Certification Standards (scscertified.com), an independent auditor. The Veriflora certification means that the flowers were grown, handled, and shipped in accordance with eight sustainability criteria that address environmental, social, and product quality issues in the cut flower industry. When we choose a VeriFlora certified bouquet, we are contributing to a global movement to encourage companies to become sustainable.

But there is a huge obstacle facing the well-meaning of Fair Trade and Veriflora certification efforts: Indifference. Here in the United States, there is not much public awareness of the dangers associated with cut flowers. Consequently, demand for sustainable flowers is almost nonexistent. Flower growers, retailers and activists agree that the desire for organically grown flowers is going to have to increase for the budding organic and fair trade flower industry to succeed. SO here is what we can do to make Valentine’s a day of celebration for everyone:

• Share the information in this article with friends and family;
• Grow our own chemically free flowers
• Buy our flowers from a local organic source;
• Request that our local florist and supermarkets purchase organically grown local flowers or Veriflora certified flowers
• Online shop for flowers that are Veriflora certified. i.e., www.organicbouquet.com, http://74.52.58.210/~ecus/www.rioroses.com

Now that we can enjoy our Valentine flowers without guilt, let’s reach a little further and purchase Fair Trade Valentine chocolates. We can then enjoy our moonlight rendezvous with a free conscience, and impress our Loved One with our caring for others and the planet.

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