The Pika Way
Pika Flowers keeps sustainable practices at the forefront of everything we do in preparation, design, installation, and disposal. I've seen the pervasive unsustainable way that a majority of the floral industry works, and my goal is to go against that grain. Pika Flowers mission is to weave sustainability into the fabric of our process without ever sacrificing on the beauty and impact of our designs.
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While 80% of the flowers purchased by both florists and consumers today are grown overseas, we are committed to sourcing a majority of our flowers from British flower farmers and British wholesalers when season allows and whenever possible (October-March is tricky for using exclusively British blooms). Working with local farmers helps us cut down on fossil fuel use, supports other small businesses, a local agricultural economy and green jobs.
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In addition to single-use vessels, floral foam and lack of composting, there are other key ways the mainstream floral industry is utterly unsustainable: sourcing monoculture-grown flowers from countries thousands of miles away (reliant on long distance shipment via air cargo); depending on international floral agriculture hubs where labor and environmental protections are weak (mainly Colombia, Ecuador, Vietnam and elsewhere); use of synthetic chemical sprays to preserve flowers’ vase life; use of sprayed / synthetically dyed flowers, feathers, and other products that do not biodegrade or can leach chemicals into the environment.
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Pika Flowers is committed to going a different way.
Pika's Sustainability Partners
It takes a village, and we have a fantastic village of pioneering sustainability partners that aid in our efforts to do floral design in the most ethical and Earth-friendly way possible.
Confetti Club London
Confetti Club is a not-for-profit that specializes in repurposing used event flowers by dehydrating the petals of flowers to create beautiful biodegradable confetti with colour and scent in tact. Founded by siblings Toby and Genni Shouls, Confetti Club is a mover and shaker in the sustainable floristry world. Confetti Club relies on donated flowers from large events where alternatively most of the flowers would be thrown away, but instead Toby arrives to collect flowers that will dry well such as roses, delphinium, peonies, hydrangea, carnation, stock, tulips, sunflowers, lavender and eucalyptus leaves. On top of all of the good they're already doing, all profits gained are donated to cancer and cancer related research charities.
Com:post
Com:post is an incredible service that makes composting green waste so much more accessible to florists. Founded by Hannah Martin and Fiona Knowlton, Hannah is a florist herself and found herself very frustrated with the lack of green waste recycling in the industry. Fiona's background is in Commercial Business Development and her own interest in growing food and flowers led to Fiona and Hannah making a perfect partnership in this venture. Their mission is to provide a solution to the green waste issue in the cut flower industry, and we are so glad they exist. They so beautifully fill a gap in the sustainability loop by providing the brown paper sacks to catch the 35-45 kilos of green waste from each event.
First Mile
First Mile is a recycling and waste management service that we at Pika utilize to recycle our flexible plastics. A sad reality is that most bunches of flowers come wrapped in cellophane plastic sleeves which in most cases end up in the landfill. First Mile has solved that by making it so simple for us at Pika to recycle those flexible plastics. First Mile sends the sacks of recyclables off to their 'sacktory' to be sorted, and anything that can't be recycled is sent away to be made into green energy, so nothing from their recycling centers ends up in the landfill. We love to see it!!
