At first glance, the roses and chocolate given as gifts on Valentine's Day seem pretty harmless. They're easy to find, relatively inexpensive, and generally accepted with love from the receiver. However, the millions of roses and chocolates sold for Valentine's Day each year take a large toll on the environment, as shown in the video below from Waste360.
Flowers
A worker sorts roses at the Nevado flower farm in Ecuador. (Dolores Ochoa/AP)
Most of the flowers Americans buy for Valentine's Day are roses. Almost all of these roses have been grown in South American countries like Ecuador and Colombia and flown to the United States for consumers to purchase. The year-round warm climate in these countries makes them ideal for growing the roses needed to supply stores with flowers in the middle of February.
The flower industry hasn't always operated like this. Before 1991, there was a 6% import duty on roses from Colombia. Congress passed the Andean Trade Preference Act to move Colombia and other South American countries' economies away from cocaine production to legal industries, so the tax on imported roses went away and massive amounts of flowers could be imported inexpensively.
The environmental impact of imported roses largely comes from their transport. Flowers from these countries are usually shipped out on passenger planes for most of the year, but the demand for Valentine's Day flowers requires hundreds of cargo planes to fly from the Andes to Miami in the weeks leading up to the holiday, according to Vox.
These extra flower flights add to the already high amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. According to The International Council on Clean Transportation, approximately 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide were emitted from burning 114 million liters of fuel to fly these special deliveries of roses to the United States in 2018. Using the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator for calculations, this amount of carbon dioxide equates to 60,950 homes' electricity use for one year, 45,911,600 charged smartphones, and would require 470,143 acres of U.S. forests to be neutralized.
As eco-unfriendly as the flower business seems, there are ways to enjoy roses for Valentine's Day. Sustainable options include buying flowers that are certified by Florverde, an "independent social and environmental standard for the flower sector", and buying from a local florist that sources their flowers from American growers rather than Walmart. The new concept of secondhand flowers has added a third option, as well, as reported by The New York Times.
Chocolate
A cacao pod hangs from a tree at a chocolate farm in Venezuela. (Fernando Llano/AP)
The other half of the typical Valentine's Day gift duo is a heart-shaped box of chocolates. The cacao used to make this chocolate has historically been grown in West Africa, but producers are increasingly looking to South America for cacao production, causing deforestation across the continent.
Cadbury estimates that a 49-gram bar of their Dairy Milk chocolate has a carbon footprint of 169 grams. Deforestation to grow the cacao in chocolate adds to this amount. According to the World Resources Institute, the production of one 200-gram bar of milk chocolate is equal to driving a car 1.7 miles. These numbers continue to climb when the cacao is produced from a cleared rainforest area.
According to the World Wildlife Foundation, 70% of the world's cacao beans are grown in West Africa. The effects of climate change are expected to hit this area particularly hard with climbing temperatures and droughts, which adversely affects the sensitive cacao trees. Growing cacao is also a harsh process for the land, so farmers are running out of usable land to grow cacao trees.
The issues with growing cacao in West Africa have also led to mass deforestation in the area as farmers are searching for usable land. The use of child labor and hazardous conditions on these farms has also been a cause for alarm in the chocolate industry. Despite these problems, there are ways to satisfy your sweet tooth while still being eco-friendly.
When looking for chocolate, look for brands that are marked Fair Trade. They are usually a little more expensive than your average Hershey bar, but they come with the reassurance that there is no child labor involved and has less of an environmental impact. Chocolate that is certified by the Rainforest Alliance is also produced under sustainable conditions that produce less carbon dioxide emissions. Steering clear of plastic and opting for chocolate with more eco-friendly packaging is also a good place to start.
Regardless of how you celebrate Valentine's Day, show some love to our planet by making eco-friendly choices about your chocolate and flowers this year. By doing so, you are helping to curb the effects of climate change and contributing to a more sustainable future for everyone.
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