The Netherlands is known for her export of flowers around the globe. The flower trade is one of the main sectors in the Dutch economy. Unfortunately, a large amount of the cultivated flowers is wasted because we handle a minimal margin as regards to damage and decay. The result is an excessive amount of waste. Currently the search for other applications is barely going on. In my opinion this is regretful. The waste flowers are mostly too precious for their aesthetic value to leave unused, which these flowers become when thrown away.
During my research I focused on analyzing this waste flow. As the end result of my research i produced a database from flower waste. By which I show consumers and producers from the flower sector that this waste has an aesthetic value and that it is used as a raw material for new products.
The first part of my research provides insight in the origin of the waste flow. I visited a plantation of roses to understand how the production works and to overview the disapproved, waste flowers. The flowers that leave the plantation, are transported to the auction market. Here, they get auctioned to retail stores, like florists, garden centers and supermarkets. At every retail store flowers get rejected and convicted as waste. If we count the amount of disapproved flowers, of the three stages above, we may conclude that we throw away two billion flowers in the Netherlands each year.
After this fundamental research about the origin of the waste flow, I started with anatomizing the waste to expose the characteristics of each raw material and to find out the possibilities of these materials. These findings are shown in an extensive database. Think about paper fabricated from ranunculus, liquid dye obtained from tulips, bio composites based on flower fibers and much more innovative and groundbreaking possibilities.
