Florint eager to lead the global floristry industry into a sustainable practice

VEENENDAAL, Netherlands: Florint, the European federation of florist associations, is launching a new sustainability scheme to encourage florists to work with eco-friendly and ethically produced flowers. ‘The Sustainable Florist’ is an international scheme that provides independent third party certification and includes levels of sustainability which are defined as Bronze, Silver and Gold.

Florint’s General Assembly on 16 October 2020 approved a plan to set a new worldwide ‘Sustainable Florist’ standard. The baseline standards it uses are developed in collaboration with the independent sustainability platform SMK (Stichting Milieu Keur). Established in 1992, SMK is a Dutch foundation that works with business organsiations to improve the sustainability of products and business management. The foundation relies on an extensive network of governments, producers, industry bodies, NGO’s, retailers and reseachers. Among the sustainability labels it manages is the Barometer Duurzame Bloemist, an already established initiative for sustainable florists which to date has 136 members.

Florint is to roll out the Sustainable Florist guidelines and certification system in the coming years.

The Sustainable Florist ‘handbook’ stipulates crucial criteria for sustainable entrepreneurship in the field of production, sourcing, packaging, waste and water management, transport, energy consumption and ethical issues such as workers’ rights.

The national florist organisations in all Florint member countries can now communicate and apply the Sustainable Florist guidelines to their member florists. The standard’s certification scheme and checklist will be translated to facilitate this. A professional certification organisation will verify compliance with the standard’s criteria.

The national florist organisations can localise and customise some of the criteria together with SMK, if needed. This flexibility ensures that the adoption of the Sustainable Florist standard will make optimal sense in every country.

It has been agreed that the various national florist organisations can, through Florint, provide input into future criteria. This will ensure the Sustainable Florist can evolve with the times. Significant developments in the areas of product, people, terms of employment and sustainable business operations, will be reflected in updates to the standard.

The International Florist Organisation, often shortened to Florint, is the global umbrella organisation supporting European florist associations.  It has 23 members and acts as a voice for more than 100,000 florists.

Florint is a European Economic Interest Group (EEIG) for the florist sector and flower industry. An EEIG is a type of non-profit trade representative that realises its goals through international cooperation.