Cut Flowers
As a rule, flowers are fabulous! Cut flowers liven up a room with their fragrance and brighten it with their colors.
What's not to love:
- Globally, the floral industry relies heavily on pesticides. Pesticide use leads to soil degradation, water pollution, habitat loss and food chain contamination.
- Every time you lean over to take a whiff, you take pesticides, some of them carcinogenic, into your body. Not such a sweet smelling way to tell someone you care.
- Instead of stopping by the grocery store or flower shop on Valentine's Day to pick up a traditional bouquet for your Sweetie, why not pop in and ask for an organic bunch of his/her favorite flowers or an organic potted plant?
- If you have garden or yard space, a gift card to a local tree farm and a promise to do all the work, would allow your Valentine to pick out a tree to enjoy for years to come.
- Protect a tree in the rainforest or support a global tree planting project.
Cards
Every Valentine's Day, over 1 billion cards are exchanged.
What's not to love:
- Most cards are printed on virgin paper and end up in the trash instead of the recycling bin.
- Get creative! Give your Main Squeeze a homemade card made out of things you find around the house, old maps, comic books or nostalgic memorabilia of your relationship.
- Have the kids make Valentines for their friends and classmates.
- Instead of giving a card to the person who means the world to you, give a Malaria Net to someone who means the world to someone else. Your Honey will appreciate his/her part in keeping someone healthy.
Jewelry
When it comes to saying I Love You, as many as 28% of us will do it with gold on Valentine's Day.
What's not to love:
- One gold ring can create as much as 20 tons of mine waste.
- The use of cyanide to separate the gold from the ore is highly dangerous. Just 1 microgram/liter is enough to be fatal to fish! A rice sized grain is fatal to humans.
- Toxic waste spills can contaminate waterways – catastrophically affecting an area's water supply and killing aquatic life.
- Mines employ 0.09% of the global workforce but consume more than 10% of the world's energy!
- Gold mining can be a threat to indigenous land rights and human rights.
- Jewelry made with renewed gold or pre-owned vintage jewelry!
Chocolate
Chocolates in heart shaped boxes were some of the earliest Valentine's Day gifts and remain a favorite gift from men to women today. About $1 billion dollars will be spent on chocolate in the US this Valentine's Day!
What's not to love:
- Chocolate is second only to cotton in pesticide use.
- There are some wonderful organic chocolates on the market today.
- Or, why not put together a personalized basket of gourmet deli selections – organic, of course – to enjoy with some locally produced, sensibly packaged wine during your romantic evening together?
Paraffin Candles
It isn't Valentine's Day without a little romantic ambiance.
What's not to love:
- Paraffin is a petroleum by-product!
- That flickering ambiance comes with a healthy helping of air quality reducing soot. Not a very romantic thing to breathe in.
- Create the same romantic ambiance without the environment side effects by using beeswax or soy bean candles instead. They will burn longer too!
In short, we love Valentines Day and the heart behind it. With a little thought on your part, you can show your heart for the environment as well!
With love from the Environment Team!
Kara Fairchild & Anne van Oorschot
