Progress! Major Florist FTD Offers Fair Trade Certified Bouquets

Demonstrating their strong commitment to labor rights, FTD has offered a line of Fair Trade certified floral arrangements, just in time for Mother's Day, Easter, and graduation season. The site now offers five different Fair Trade certified bouquets, which is one of the three flower sourcing improvements almost 10,000 Change.org members have asked the company for. But FTD doesn't plan on stopping there, and are working on other ways to improve working conditions in the cut flower industry.

At FTD.com, customers can now choose between five gorgeous collections of Fair Trade roses, in great combinations of red, white, yellow, orange and pink. The arrangements are all certified by Fairtrade International, which oversees the certification of Fair Trade products around the world. FTD has helped ensure customers can easily find and identify their Fair Trade collection by marking each one with a Fair Trade logo, and including the following apt description:

Fair Trade Certification means farms that grow flowers are given a fair price for their produce, workers enjoy safe working conditions, fair living wages are paid to workers, and environmentally friendly growing practices are used. With about 80% of the cut flowers sold in the U.S. grown outside of the country, farming communities involved reap the benefits of global trade, while helping the companies involved to maintain higher standards in their business practices, making the world a better place one bloom at a time.

The website also allows customers to easily browse for eco-friendly bouquets, including their Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade certified offerings. And as for prices, arrangements from the new Fair Trade line are on par with other offerings.

In addition to making Fair Trade certified roses available, FTD has told Change.org they are in the process of developing a supplier code of conduct prohibiting serious labor abuses and a website with information about where they source all their flowers. So it's critical to keep the pressure on and ensure FTD continues their commitment to ending abuses in the cut flower industry. Currently, child labor, forced labor, mandatory overtime, and sexual harassment are all significant problems in the cut flower sector. But when major florists like FTD support Fair Trade certified farms and ensure suppliers are operating ethically, they can make a huge difference in the lives of cut flower works.

So go ahead and send an Fair Trade certified bouquet of roses from FTD to a special person in your life. And send them the link to this petition, too. Because together, we can ensure that all flowers are beautiful for the people who pick them as well as receive them.

Photo credit: Kaz Andrew