The Floriculture Sustainability Initiative members held their General Assembly at the IPM Trade Fair in Essen, last week.
The FSI brings together key flower and pot plant growers, traders and retailers to focus on the developments towards mainstream sustainability in our sector.
Their ambition is that 90% of the flowers and pot plants traded by FSI members are sourced from responsible sources by 2020, a group of more than 50 members were present to renew their commitment.
FSI members want to create an impact in the sector and reach higher volumes of sustainable flowers and plants, whilst working on improving practices. The meeting highlighted the first 10 projects conducted by FSI members that will create knowledge and better practices and bring awareness to the issues. Learning by doing is what brings FSI members together to conduct projects and address key sustainability topics.
“By the end of 2015, a good number of key topics will have been addressed through projects, there will be follow up projects on key issues and we will be able to measure volumes from responsible sources to see where we stand towards our ambitious goal of 90% by 2020” says Jeroen Oudheusden, Executive Officer of FSI. There is no doubt that by combining the efforts of our members and implementing the learnings from FSI member projects to the measuring methodology we will lead to improvements on sustainability in the global floriculture sector”