2021 Impact Report

See our 2021 Impact Report HERE.

January is our moment for introspection. For Studio Mondine, this means looking back and reflecting on the beautiful events we had the pleasure of flowering for, the innovative designs and methods our extensive team pursued, the human connections we made with vendors around the world, and the impact our practice had on the planet.
For the Studio, January is also the time to look inward. As our 2021 season of travel for event work wound down, our small team began a series of conversations around working with intention — that is, bringing the same thoughtfulness to the production and practices of our business as we do our designs. It’s clear to us that mindfulness and intention in every facet of our flower practice is key for the longevity of our work, for our industry, and for our planet. For us event florists, this looks like careful sourcing of both flowers and hardgoods, putting effective teams together, considering where and how we travel to our events, and honoring the full cycle of an event with thoughtful end-of-life planning for every component of a job.

Not content with simply a qualitative assessment of our impact, we set about compiling and analyzing our environmental impact based on actual data from our previous season. While the floral industry enriches many of the beautifully designed spaces we enjoy, it’s also one of the uglier industries that employs unjust, unhealthy, and unsustainable farming and labor practices for products that accumulate heavy carbon footprints from their transport. Add to this an end-of-life plan for most flowers that sees them entombed in a landfill, and you’ll feel our same urgency to act.

Our journey begins today with self-knowledge. If we never understand where we came from, and what challenges to anticipate, then how can we do better? As a Studio, we’ve spent the past few months scrutinizing our design, production, and business practices to understand our baseline carbon footprint. We settled on this measurement for ease of understanding and comparison across other businesses and industries. It’s been a daunting task, as information on flower farming and sourcing is often hard to verify, if not entirely opaque. We’ll share our methodology for this first report based on the hours of research, interview, and analysis we’ve done, as well as how we plan to improve data collection and share even more meaningful, granular data in annual reports to come.

This work cannot–and should not– be done in a vacuum. Our hope is that by sharing our findings, investigating our blindspots, and endeavoring to do better, you’ll join us. By pooling our knowledge, inquiries, discoveries, energy, and resources, we’ll usher in an era of multiplicative, lasting change for our beautiful industry.

Methods:

For this first report, we will focus on the largest of our business lines: event floral design. Event floral design comprises nearly 90% of our business revenue and cost, with the greatest potential to affect our Studio’s carbon footprint. Our carbon footprint analysis features data from four major categories: event personnel (employees and contractors), event flowers, event transportation, and event waste disposal. We gathered this data from all of our 2021 events to complete an analysis of the total tons of carbon emissions our work generated. The total tons of carbon emissions includes data from both personnel and flower travel emissions. Our 2021 events ranged from destination weddings of varying size, local events such as baby showers and birthday dinners, and in-person workshops. In order to best understand our dataset, we further categorized our data by quarter due to the seasonal nature of the business. It is important to note that not all quarters are equal in terms of events executed and thus floral material, personnel, or hardgoods used. For example, during quarter 1 of 2021, the Studio did not execute any events, whereas during quarter 4 we executed 5 events.

Besides using floral material and mechanics we also use a variety of vessels in our designs. This can range from glass votives to handmade ceramic pieces. We are fortunate enough to have a robust inventory of hardgoods and vessels in our studio that we re use for events. However, our inventory does not always provide the exact vessels needed to suit each unique design thus requiring us to either rent or purchase new hardgoods. We believe that improving our consumer habits when it comes to purchasing new hardgoods for events can help alleviate our impact in the future.

Personnel:

The personnel category consists of data relating to the Studio Mondine core staff as well as all contract designers who travel with us for events. The team size varies for each production depending on the needs and scale of production. For the carbon emissions data, we gathered information from each team member about where they travelled to/from the event, and with what type of vehicle. From this information we calculated the total miles and used an emissions calculator to determine the total tons of emissions. For personnel that travelled by car, we used this online calculator, https://cotap.org/carbon-emissions-calculator/ using an average of 19.5 miles per gallon as a measure of fuel efficiency. We used this online calculator, https://flightfree.org/flight-emissions-calculator, to calculate the emissions generated when personnel travelled by plane. Both resultant data (given in metric tonnes) from the online calculators were converted into US tons by inputting the numbers into a simple google conversion tool.

Flowers:

The data we collected for the flowers category includes the travel mileage, total pounds used, percentage of local flowers used, and total stem count per event. We set a goal to determine miles the flowers have to travel between the grower, flower auction, seller, and market before they are used in our event production. Gathering information about imported flower sources proved to be incredibly difficult due to an expansive global supply chain. When we are not able to use and trace locally sourced flowers and foliage for our designs, we rely on wholesalers who often source flowers from around the world. We also have to take into consideration many other factors when it comes to gathering information on flowers such as season, growing conditions, typical growing location, and the type of transportation. For example, a flower grown in a large-scale industrial flower farm will have a different, and arguably worse, impact than say, a local and organic flower farm. While we weren’t able to gather complete data on the total miles the flower travels for our events for this particular report, we are working more closely with our wholesale vendors to get improved insight into this data for future reporting. This means connecting with wholesale vendors and distributors to collect data on sourcing locations, growing techniques, working conditions and travel patterns for flowers. The key takeaway here is that we, as florists and designers, need to get into the practice of asking where our materials come from, to signal to our wholesalers that such information is vitally important to collect and maintain.

We were, however, able to gather data on the total pounds of flowers, total stem count and percent of local flowers used per event and for 2021 overall. Total pounds of flowers and total stem count data were determined by analyzing our flower order logs for each event. Our flower order logs detail the flower variety used, quantity of stems, and from which vendor the flowers are purchased. To determine the average weight of each stem, we weighed a variety of flowers we used most often in the season (mums, clematis, pincushion protea, & tulips) to arrive at an average weight of 0.85oz. This number was then multiplied by the number of stems in each flower order and converted into pounds.

To calculate the percentage of local flowers used per event we also had to analyze our flower logs and connect with wholesale distributors to determine where their flowers are sourced from. The term “local” in the floral business can indicate a variety of definitions such as “domestically grown”, state-grown, or within a certain mileage vicinity. For our study and this report, we opted for a larger definition of “local” as grown-in-state. Luckily we are able to work with many vendors who source flowers within a short distance of our studio and event locations, thus reducing the overall mileage a flower travels. To determine the percentage of local flowers, the total stem count from local flower vendors was divided by the total stem count.

Since we did not have better visibility around imported flowers, we set a baseline number of miles traveled as 53,110 miles, or 1407 tons of CO2, essentially making the assumption that all imported flowers came to us by way of the largest global flower auction in Aalsmeer, Holland. We settled on this assumption as a baseline, as it allows us to create the largest working average between several importing scenarios, all with their own very different carbon footprints:

Importing garden roses from Southern California for an event we’re executing in Washington DC
Importing mock orange flowers from Wisconsin for an event we’re executing in California
Importing sweet pea flowers from Japan by way of the Naniwa flower auction in Osaka, Japan for an event we’re executing in California

Setting the import point at the largest and furthest away auction in Aalsmeer, Holland runs the risk of inflating the carbon footprint of our imported flowers, but until we can collect more granular import data, it’ll be important for us to err on the side of overreporting carbon footprint data in regards to flower importing.

Event Transportation:

Event transportation refers specifically to the transportation required during an event period. This can include driving to and from venues, accommodations, meal locations, airports, and everything in between. Depending on the location of our event, event transport can be quite minimal. This is especially true when working in larger metro areas. Other times, our team is required to travel long distances during event production– this may be because we’re working in a less dense area, and our studio, accommodation, or set-up locations are far from one another. Determining the total miles travelled during an event period required closely analyzing our internal production schedules, which detailed event specific addresses & locations, and cross referencing the mileage on google maps. The mileage was then translated into carbon emissions data using an online carbon emissions calculator (https://cotap.org/carbon-emissions-calculator/ ) using an average of 19.5 Miles Per Gallon as a measure of fuel efficiency. This MPG is commensurate with the fuel economy of our Studio van (2019 RAM ProMaster 1500) and the passenger minivans we often rent for event transportation (Dodge Caravan or similar). The data from this calculator is measured in metric tons, so a conversion to U.S. short tons was made for this report.

Waste:

With a focus on event end-of-life, the Studio has tried to divert as much of our event-related waste from the landfill as possible. We track our waste by the amount of gallon bags we use at events and, when available, we work with local waste management companies and municipalities to compost our floral material. Each geography we work in presents new and unique challenges to waste disposal, and no one-size-fits-all approach suffices. Uneven support for composting across county and state lines has meant that we’ve needed to rely on informal channels for composting our floral waste, including working with the very farms we source flowers from. In addition, many composting co-ops and community programs are not equipped to handle the type of compost and quantity of compost we would deliver to them. Typical event waste varies from florals and foliage, floral mechanics (tape, wire), rigging equipment for installation work (if applicable), and wax material from candles. We often reuse mechanics, rigging equipment and wax material when possible to offset our impact and divert trash from the landfill.

For subsequent impact reporting, we will track the amount of waste produced at events and aim to discover, work with, and share more composting facilities and programs. Our data for this category consists of total pounds of waste to the landfill and total pounds of waste diverted from the landfill (either from composting the material or drying the material for future reuse/upcycling).

Results:

Figure 1.

The amount of local flowers we are able to use during production depends on a variety of factors including client preferences, design choices, market options, and event location. The quarter with the highest average percentage of local flowers was quarter 3. As detailed in the graph, during quarter 1 and quarter 4 the percentage of local flowers used was 0%.

Figure 2.

Figure 2 shows the amount of waste produced during 2021. For many events we were able to divert a significant amount of waste from the landfill either by reusing, composting, or drying the flowers and green material. We have no data for quarter 1 because there were no events during this historically quiet time. The quarter with the most pounds diverted from the landfill waste was during quarter 4. As noted in the graph, we were unable to divert any waste from the landfill during quarter 2 due to the lack of compost facilities in the geographic areas of the quarter’s events.

Figure 3.

Figure 3 shows the full results table for our impact assessment. The bottom row shows the total numbers for each category. In 2021, SM personnel flew a total of 55,012.2mi, drove 6,225.8mi, and emitted 30.01 tons of CO2 from driving and flying combined. We used a total of 4,555 lbs of flowers for our event production and diverted 2,964 lbs of waste from the landfill.

Looking to the future:

Our goal for this project was to assess the Studio’s carbon emission footprint generated from an entire year of floral event production. We were able to determine information on the total mileage and emissions our team travels for events, a waste audit, the percentage of local flowers and total flowers used. Given our results, there are many areas in which we could lessen our impact and by proxy, our carbon emissions.

Our carbon emissions data and environmental impact assessment will continue in 2022 and the years to come, with strategic improvements to our data collection and more robust and granular analysis. Our team will continue to source, calculate, and publish data on our environmental impact in good faith, transparency and accountability. We hope that the information shared here will encourage others in our creative, resourceful, and vibrant flower community to do the same. Let us as an international community foreground sustainability conversations, produce exceptional designs, and work together towards a healthier event and floral industry for a healthier planet.

Studio Carbon Emission Mitigation Goals

With a baseline established, we set about creating Studio-wide carbon emission reduction goals for the coming seasons. Our team identified a number of both pre-event and post-event goals and considerations to help us achieve our ambitious mitigation goals. For the coming season, our goals are specific to the two drivers of carbon emissions in our event floral productions: sourcing and waste disposal.

Pre-Event Carbon Emission Mitigation Goals

We aim to source a minimum of 40% locally grown flowers across our events by 2024.
We aim to use 50% or more of the hardgoods in our inventory for events, and will supplement with rental hardgoods in an effort to minimize purchases of virgin or new materials/vessels, by 2024.

Other areas of pre-event carbon emission mitigation exploration we’re conducting as a Studio include:

- Staffing with local designers and producers to reduce our overall number of miles traveled

- Creating more robust internal trucking schedules for both materials and personnel to make each mile traveled more efficient

- Sourcing non-floral perishable materials such as pillar and votive wax that are eligible for composting for our events

Post-Event Carbon Emission Mitigation Goals

We aim to compost a minimum of 50% of our floral waste across our destination events by 2024.

For California events, in accordance with state legislation, we will compost 100% of floral material from our events effective immediately.

Other areas of post-event carbon emission mitigation exploration we’re conducting as a Studio include:

- Diverting waste from the landfill by upcycling floral materials that can be dried
- Donating candles, hardgoods, and mechanic material to local San Francisco non-profits such as Builders Resource and SCRAP for upcycling

Lastly, we are spearheading a program for our full time employees to learn and engage with local community groups focused on environmental and environmental justice by offering two paid volunteering days annually.

Sources:

Flight Emissions Calculator:

https://flightfree.org/flight-emissions-calculator

-Part of a campaign for the “Flight-free pledge” and to inform people about the climate impact of aviation travel.

Vehicle Emissions Calculator:

https://cotap.org/carbon-emissions-calculator/

-Non-profit organization that encourages those in the developed regions to offset their carbon emissions. “COTAP counteracts your carbon emissions through certified forestry projects in least-developed regions…”

Google Flights

-Total flight emissions are listed next to flight options to keep you informed!

Thank you for reading! We wish you all the best in the new year.

Warmly,

The entire team here at Studio Mondine

Have questions or comments? Please feel free to contact us at mia@studiomondine.com

Studio MondineJanuary 25, 2022Comment

2021 Impact Report

Methods:

Looking to the future:

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