Our Values

Being botanically based and conscious consumers ourselves, the Floralsilk team are striving to make our business as ethical and sustainable as possible.  We are concentrating on a few keys areas to lower our carbon footprint and do our bit in the quest to retain resources for generations to come.

Production

It is good to know that faux flowers often have less environmental impact than regularly having fresh cut flowers in your home.  Artificial flowers can be re-used year after year and the carbon cost of getting them is far lower.  Fresh flowers are often grown using potentially harmful pesticides and then, due to their very limited shelf life, are transported around the globe as quickly as possible in airplanes and refrigerated lorries.  These modes of transport produce massive amounts of greenhouse emissions - around 60-80% more than shipping by sea freight which is our preferred method of delivering faux flowers to the UK. At Floralsilk we ship all our bulk lines and consolidate our containers to ensure minimal impact and reduce our carbon footprint.

Packing

We are continuously auditing and monitoring our UK production processes and taking steps where possible to switch to greener alternatives.  These include:

• Our cardboard boxes are FSC certified, made from recycled material and we reuse cardboard boxes where possible.  FSC certification ensures that products come from responsibly managed forests that provide environmental, social and economic benefits.
• We use recyclable paper packing tape to seal all boxes that we dispatch from our UK warehouse
• We keep up consistent dialogue with our overseas suppliers regarding their packing materials and methods with regular factory visits to help drive improvements and monitor performance.

Plastic

By nature, artificial flowers inevitably contain some plastic but they are not designed to be single use and are normally used for the long term.  However, there are still areas where we can behave responsibly such as:

• Reducing plastic where possible.  For example: paper wrapped stems, reducing glitter use and introducing ‘no glitter’ Christmas ranges
• We are committed to moving towards alternative materials in our floral and Christmas ranges i.e. paper, felt, glass, metal and wood
• The plastic used to protect our floral arrangements is 100% recyclable

People

Not only is our physical environment important but so are the people we share it with.  We make an effort to develop relationships with suppliers and agents and conduct regular audits. We also allow long lead times and work with factories to make sure no undue pressure is placed on workers. In the UK we work with several charities by donating stock to create better spaces, encourage education and reduce waste. One organisation we work with is In Kind Direct who distribute our Christmas sample stock to multiple charities across the UK.