Beautiful blooms, fair-trade blooms

by Ilona Peltz, Posted Jul 8th 2008 1:00PM

Filed Under: Flowers

When they started showing up at Whole Foods Market not so long ago, even though they were more expensive than others of their kind, according to the Utne Reader, they "few off the shelves."

What are they? Roses. Lush, gorgeous roses, huge roses with heads bigger than your fist. More than that, they're fair trade roses. The farms in Ecuador on which they're grown have agreements with TransFairUSA, agreements which ensure the flowers were produced in compliance with strict environmental and labor standards. And they're just plain gorgeous!

Increasingly, production costs are sending flower farms to other countries with far lower costs. Unfortunately, they also have far less strict labor practices. So, if you have the choice of choosing flowers that were produced on farms where pesticides are sprayed when there are workers around, or a farm that adheres to higher, worker-friendly standards, which would you choose?

Source

Tags: Ecuador, ecuador-roses, fair-trade, fair-trade-flowers, flower-farms, flowers, roses, transfair-USA, Utne-reader