What do you do with your garbage stems and leaves?

[Taylors_Flowers]

Do you compost them or send them to a brush dump and keep them separated from general trash?

I've always been curious as to what others do.

We had an official from the DNR stop in and question what we do with our stems and if they could help by disposing of them for us....

 

[mumsandmore]

Next year we will be shredding and composting. We were shooting for this year, but ran out of time. These types of services are not readily available here, so we will be doing it ourselves.

 

[bootcampguy]

All our floor droppings (greens) they have to be in clear bags and they get re-cycled. Regular can be in any bag at all. If they can see trash mixed in with greens (they won't pick it up).

 

[BOSS]

We had an official from the DNR stop in and question what we do with our stems and if they could help by disposing of them for us....

Look out, once the government gets involved it will get all screwed up...

 

[RWK]

actually.......when I was in Portland....they use a type of bio-degradeable green bag......and all of the green stems and stuff is recycled. You seperate all paper, newspaper, wrappings, etc and that is recycled as well.

As an added PROMOTIONAL benefit........advertise as a GREEN ECO-business. In Atlanta, there is a florist ( name escapes me at the moment ) that is officially LEEDS certified.

If you have the space at home or in the back grounds of the shop...........do your own composting of the materials and SELL THAT PRODUCT !!!

 

[David]

we compost. I have weekly pick up. $20.00 each pick up.

 

[OB1]

Here, we have city mandated recycling, and, although it is free for home owners, as business owners, we have no choice but to pay, or we will be fined, big time.
So all of our plastics and aluminum are separated for recycle.
Our green waste is separated as best as we can, and goes out for green waste recycling, is turned into compost, and is available to the public for a small fee.
All of our water is recycled into an onsite watering system for our gardens...this is not mandated but works really well for us...it helps the environment plus it saved wear and tear on our septic system...now that we are hooked onto the city services I guess it doesn't matter so much, but it is really the right thing to do.
We also have an onsite compost system that we developed ourselves, and we feed it as much as we can with old plants, discarded vase water etc....
We devised a system to divert all of our waste water to water our various flowerbeds years ago, so even though it is not mandated, we continue with that simple system, as it helps to keep the various trees and shrubs watered on our property, as well as the mini park next door to us.
We still put out all of our other recycle stuff every week.
But I have to agree, It all worked really well, once the municipal government got involved, it became more complicated that need be, with lots of rules and penalties that needn't have been implemented, except that some of out neighbouring retailers just wouldn't take part in any of the recycling programms.
Truth is, all of the recycling has been great for my business....both for the environment, and for the various marketing opportunities that came with our efforts. We are now listed as an "environmentaly friendly business" in our yellow pages both in print and online.
I know I sound like a tree hugger, ( and I am ) but I am really happy that we do all of this.
Twenty-five years years ago, I put out maybe 30-40 boxes of "garbage" Now we are down to pehaps 5 - 10. And that is with 1000% growth.
So I feel good that even in my little itty bitty part of the world, I am making a difference.
It's too bad that so many other business owners have not followed simple logic and done the right thing...now we are legally obligated to follow a bunch of silly rules, laid out by a bunch of bureaucrats, because some of our peers didn't use their heads, and behave logically.
Bummer.
JP

 

[Snapdragon Studio]

We have yard debris pick-up with our trash service. It costs $6 a month, and we can put out as much as we have!

 

[anytimeflowers]

I have one garbage that gets plastic in the store, we have recycling bins for cardboard and paper, plastic, and then the other stuff. I do NOT bag my stems. They go into a landfill along with my neighbors (coffee shop) BAGS AND BAGS of their CARDBOARD cups, coffee grounds, etc.

I am NOT a tree hugger, but come on, this is so easy, my neighbor drives me nuts! They DO put all of their milk jugs in the plastic bins, and they DO put their UNBROKEN DOWN cardboard boxes in the cardboard dumpster - we pull them back out and leave them out in order to fit our broken down boxes inside. Somebody over there discovers them and breaks them down.

It just seems so silly to me that they bag up things that would help degrade other things, ugh! One of my favorite things to tell people is that my garbage in the summer almost disappears before the garbage truck ever shows up to take it away. We don't have mandated recycling, yet....but with my type of neighbor, I suppose it will be inevitable.

 

[Mikey the Flower Guy]

All our greens and compostables are "binned" and pick up for shredding, composting, and once the process is completed, the composted earth is available free to anyone that wishes to have it!!
ALL non compostables are either recycled, or recycled, and little is left in the way as actual "trash".......our shop has 9 recycle(blue) bins, 3 compost(green) bins, and a cardboard stacker...the shop rarely puts out a "trash bin" in a month, and at our home next door, maybe once every 5-6 weeks!
Our city is a national leader in recycling, and our town of Dundas, has reached an almost 87% recycling mentality.....the only real "trash" we see, is the "retarded teenagers" that think front lawns are their personal trash dumps.

 

[BOSS]

we compost. I have weekly pick up. $20.00 each pick up.

Kewl.. they pay you $20.00 for each pick-up... awesome

Seriously tho... you do not have to be a "tree huger" to realize that as a life form, we have bastardized this little rock we call Earth. And, that if we do not change the way we go about life, there is little hope the planet can recover and go forward to still be here a few generations from now. Anything we can do, no matter how small, will benefit those that come behind us.

The "butterfly effect" really does exist, and really does go on forever....

 

[DFlorist]

All our greens and compostables are "binned" and pick up for shredding, composting, and once the process is completed, the composted earth is available free to anyone that wishes to have it!!
ALL non compostables are either recycled, or recycled, and little is left in the way as actual "trash".......our shop has 9 recycle(blue) bins, 3 compost(green) bins, and a cardboard stacker...the shop rarely puts out a "trash bin" in a month, and at our home next door, maybe once every 5-6 weeks!
Our city is a national leader in recycling, and our town of Dundas, has reached an almost 87% recycling mentality.....the only real "trash" we see, is the "retarded teenagers" that think front lawns are their personal trash dumps.

Same here. We usually have a couple blue bins, a couple bags of plastic recyclying, 2-4 green bins, and I take broken down cardboard back to the auction. Then we have about 1 bag of garbage a month, compared to 5 or 6 that my neighbours put out a week.. ugh.

 

[Kristine]

green scraps are recycled into compost

bucket water is used to water outdoor plants (in the summer)

paper etc goes to the paper gator

Now if I could find somewhere for all our cardboard, (no township recycling here) , we'd only have cello sleeves to send to the landfill.

 

[Sprout]

Our residential recycling program is very good here, but there is nothing for commercial, so you are on your own. Can't even get a bin to put on the curb with normal every day things like water bottles.

Last time I inquired, I was told recycling just my cardboard would be double what I pay for trash pickup because of the lack of market for it.

As for composting, my shop barely has alley enough for the smallest dumpster they make and I'm an apartment dweller so it's not coming home. Wish there were better alternatives. You guys all sound very lucky!

 

[LOTAKIDS]

We pay for recycing in our city.... I have been doing this for years both here in Washington and when we lived in Southern CA...
I have a big trash can in shop for clippings, one for paper, plastic and aluminum cans, and one for trash. I have the trash and paper/plastic/aluminum in my home also. We can even put pizza boxes, expresso cups in the clippings bin which is nice as they took too much room in the trash can. With this, we are provided a big green bin for the clippings, a blue bin for the recyles and we have two trash cans... This is for the shop and our home of 5 people. I love this as I hate waste. I am amazed at how many visitors (designers) to my shop I have and I have to teach them to recyle. Especially now when cities in Washington make it so easy with the waste management contracts.

We empty the buckets into the yard to water the plants especially in the summer... in the winter we just help drown them... We are on septic and I dont' want the extra water going into that.

I use the empty milk jugs to make food water for arrangments so we don't have to scurry to fill vases, especially when busy.

 

[Flowerchatter03]

We have a place in the back of our shop where we put everything green that is proper to compost...stems..flowers..fruit...veggies. etc.

However, since our upstairs neighbor is now a nutball, we have no choice but to bag it up until he is evicted.

Case in point: I had a bride that needed a whole pile of rose petals. I called my suppliers and got some older open roses that would be easier to take the petals off. Now after the petal removal, you had a really nice green stem with leaves but absolutely NO petals. Our nutty neighbor thought that they are rose buds and placed a bunch of them in a subway cup on his steps beside of the flower shop as he thinks they will bloom. Yes, I am serious and this isn't the first time.

He was majorly PO'ed when they came up missing.

 

[Sprout]

Case in point: I had a bride that needed a whole pile of rose petals. I called my suppliers and got some older open roses that would be easier to take the petals off. Now after the petal removal, you had a really nice green stem with leaves but absolutely NO petals. Our nutty neighbor thought that they are rose buds and placed a bunch of them in a subway cup on his steps beside of the flower shop as he thinks they will bloom.

Hey, I went to a design show once where the designer de-petaled the roses in order to use the calyxes in arrangements. Maybe your neighbor is just fashion forward!

 

[dlnfloral]

Separate yard waste bin/can. That's from April until November. Other months we try to compost but usually end up putting in yard bags for pick up