BRIAN KENNY: The next time you’re at your local florist to pick up a bouquet for that someone special or maybe just for yourself, take a moment to look around and think about where those flowers came from. The bright greens and buds on the verge of bursting would lead you to believe that they were just cut at a nearby nursery and rushed right over to the shop. After all, freshness is the whole reason we buy fresh cut flowers. So you might be surprised to learn that’s probably not the case.
BRIAN KENNY: So these flowers are taken from Kenya and they are shipped far, far away. So I’m trying to imagine, how long does a flower live once you’ve cut it at its stem? BRIAN KENNY: You guys were together in the Netherlands recently actually as part of an HBS program where groups of students go abroad and they get to visit with companies and see industry close up. What did you glean there? Obviously this is the epicenter of where the buying and selling happens.
BRIAN KENNY: Sounds like there’s energy usage involved here. I’m wondering, if you look at the typical journey by air, let’s say, what does that look like in terms of the carbon that they’re using? MIKE TOFFEL: The trick is to keep the temperature down and to keep variability around that temperature down as well with all of these exchanges. It turns out, and you also have to continue to evacuate the ethylene that’s off-gassing from the flowers so that you retard the ripening in a sense, the ripening process.
BRIAN KENNY: And you and I have talked in previous episodes of the show about the fact that businesses probably won’t be motivated by altruism to do the right thing. They’ll be motivated because there’s a good business rationale for it, and they still can make the revenue that they need to make. BRIAN KENNY: It sounds like this is a lot more work for Sian to do it this way. You mentioned, Willy, the holidays, Valentine’s Day. I’m sure there’s these occasions that happen throughout the year that they now have to plan differently for if they’re going to be using sea freight as a mode of transport because they’ve got to have a lot more lead time.