As the subject of sustainable practices and consumption gains rapidly in relevance among customer groups, most businesses are left behind. Complex structures, lack of transparency and expensive certificates without any real meaning for the consumer paint a meek picture of the topic of sustainability within floriculture. All of these issues highlight the urgent need for innovation within the flower industry to ensure that certifications genuinely reflect environmentally responsible practices and are truly understood and appreciated by customers, and here's where the FlowerMe company, rooted in the depths of Web3 culture comes in.
Obscure Certificates That Lack Customer Focus
Despite its steady progress toward sustainability, the flower industry still has an array of challenges when it comes to environmental efforts, related certificates, and greenwashing. When consumers are looking for environmentally friendly options, the industry often provides sustainability and CSR-compliant certificates with a variety of requirements that customers have a hard time understanding.
These labels are often seen as overwhelming and sometimes just too obscure to relate to. Together with misleading claims about sustainability efforts and limited transparency among certifications, they confuse customers and sometimes even undermine their trust. Especially those consumers who actually want to make eco-friendly choices are thereby inhibited from doing so.
As the subject of sustainable practices and consumption gains rapidly in relevance among customer groups, most businesses are left behind. Complex structures, lack of transparency and expensive certificates without any real meaning for the consumer paint a meek picture of the topic of sustainability within floriculture. All of these issues highlight the urgent need for innovation within the flower industry to ensure that certifications genuinely reflect environmentally responsible practices and are truly understood and appreciated by customers.
The Idea Behind FlowerMe and the Web3 Culture
The initial idea behind FlowerMe is rooted in the depths of Web3 culture and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). From there, it has grown to create a new approach to sustainability certifications for participants in floriculture and horticulture markets around the world as well as their customers. Together with their partners and their unique use of new technologies like the blockchain and smart contracts, the organization creates traceable and sustainable contributions to real nature preservation and CO2-offset activities.
This also reflects the company’s commitment to establishing a relevant and sustainable impact on the environment by taking on floriculture with its environmental challenges. The founders believe that flowers should be beautiful through and through, including their often complex production methods and long journeys into our hands. After its recent launch in 2023, FlowerMe began to work on its solutions for businesses and consumers as it spotted a growing trend among customers - especially the younger ones - concerning their spending habits.
General awareness towards climate positivity, environmental consciousness, and the sustainability efforts of companies grew rapidly as (young) consumers started to grow tired of the slow and often misleading advancements in these fields. As a result, spending habits changed and sustainable products and services that are truly free from greenwashing became favored among consumers of all age groups.
The Concept of FlowerMe - How Does it Work?
FlowerMe’s concept is all about combining the trifactor of sustainability, technology, and beauty. It aims to create a balance between this trinity of factors about flowers and their everlasting role of beauty and appreciation in our society. With this in mind, the company wants to make flowers truly sustainable by protecting real nature and the ecosystems around us that allow them to grow in the first place. By incorporating state-of-the-art technology, they aim to create comprehensible products and services for businesses and consumers alike.
In further detail, FlowerMe uses blockchain technology to issue a token on the polygon chain every time a customer decides to offset their purchase and protect or help the creation of nature. Customers can then easily access their contributions through the company’s 'Compensate-Tool', which shows a collection of all contributions and summarizes them in m2 of protected land area and kg of captured CO2, among others. From there, “protectors” can always log in to observe the progress of their contribution and share their commitment with friends and family on social media.
Customers include flower producers, wholesalers, and florists as well as the end consumer, the entire supply chain so to speak. This way, transparency is increased, and offset commitments can be made by all participants in the supply chain. FlowerMe supports businesses in their communication of said contributions with individual marketing materials and helps them boost their social media engagement to attract new and old customers.
With its flagship program 'Initiative+', the company likes to inspire businesses and consumers to take initiative into their own hands and contribute to the necessary efforts in a space where only little is being done. That is why FlowerMe also rounds up contributions to protect a more natural environment and create a little surplus within the offsetting activities of its customers.
FlowerMe expresses:
“Depending on their origin, flowers travel up to 10.000 kilometers until they arrive in Europe - often by airplane. Local flower production also creates massive amounts of emissions due to the complex infrastructure and high energy requirements to grow plants outside of their natural environment.
This way, a standard bouquet of flowers carries a heavy burden of 25kg+ of CO2, depending on its size - that’s simply not acceptable for us. Especially because these numbers will become more relevant to consumers in the future. With all that in mind, we see the beauty of flowers impacted in a negative way, which we want to change by making relatable contributions accessible for everyone.”
What Could Be the Impact of FlowerMe in the Future?
In the past months, FlowerMe has helped to offset over 10.000 roses from various origins. Their ambition is to reach over 1.000.000 stems this year, which means they want to protect over 354.000 m2 of rainforest that hold up to 8.850 tons of CO2. A standard car would need to travel nearly the distance between the earth and the moon to emit that much CO2.
In the future, FlowerMe wants to grow by helping more businesses meet their desired sustainability goals and create more awareness among consumers by educating them on relevant issues connected to the supply chains in floriculture. The company’s overall goal this year is to be part of as many positive and sustainable customer interactions during which flowers are exchanged, and to help with the gifting of true sustainability, and not just flowers.
FlowerMe is open for collaborations with interested florists and wholesalers as well as producers to maximize their positive impact and communicate it to reach more customers. A free compensation is available upon sign-up to the company’s occasional Newsletter and definitely worth a try!
For additional information, visit FlowerMe's website.
Photos courtesy of FlowerMe.
