Sustainability
Here at Shropshire petals, we are committed to doing things as sustainably as possible.
We’re always evolving to make our products and practices more sustainable. From high-tech, solar-powered planting and weeding robots, to protecting wildlife on our farm, using eco-friendly packaging, and ensuring fair pay for our team. We recognise that we are not perfect but we are working on being better. Here's a few immediate changes we have made within the office, as a business and across our farm and we have plenty of others in the pipeline, check back with us to hear about our progress.
Eco-friendly Confetti
Not only are our dried flower petals sustainable and require less processing than paper confetti, but they're naturally biodegradable and dye-free. During the growing process our flower field provides a stunning haven for wildlife during the summer time.
Our flower fields offer a wonderful haven for wildlife and we're proud of our biodiversity, from bees, insects, birds, hares and even deer. We pick our flowers by hand to ensure only the best flowers are used and dry them on our farm to keep the carbon footprint low. Once the petals are dried we keep them stored in our flower shed, then hand pack them ready for worldwide delivery.
In 2019 we wanted to highlight the importance of bees, so we hand planted a giant bee in our flower field, made only from cornflowers, which bees love! Our aptly named 'Freddie-Mercu-Bee' was whopping 17 metres square! Read more about him here.
The World's First delphinium planting and weeding robot
In 2022 we embraced the future of farming with a revolutionary robot that not only plants our beautiful flowers, but also weeds around them too! It was a world first for our delphiniums!
Our flower robot is solar powered, so doesn't require any energy from the grid or from fuel, plus it uses high precision GPS to remember exactly where all our precious seeds are planted. Plus the robot is lightweight which is great for our soil structure too.
We plant a variety of different flowers on our family-run farm in lovely Shropshire every year. We used to plant our flowers via tractor or hand, and spend many hours weeding by hand, but from 2022 we put our faith into technology and in 2023 expanded our robot fleet to three in total.
Once our flowers are perfectly bloomed, we pick them by hand, dry them onsite and send them worldwide as biodegradable petal confetti for eco-friendly weddings or dried flowers for gifts and arrangements.
Renewable Energy & Infrastructure
The past year has seen the business make its biggest sustainability investment to date. Shropshire Petals has moved into a new, purpose-built A+ EPC-rated building, uniting office, dispatch, and warehouse space in a single, highly energy-efficient home for the business. The interior has been designed with a biophilic approach, bringing nature indoors with over 60 living plants and sound-absorbing design, to create calm, natural spaces that support the team to work effectively.
Alongside this, the farm has expanded its solar generation from an existing 125kW system to a combined 425kW, with 504 new panels installed on the machinery shed roof. This is backed by 600kWh of battery storage, allowing the business to store and use its own clean energy rather than drawing from the grid, even during peak periods.
People & Culture
Recognising that sustainable progress depends on people as much as infrastructure, Shropshire Petals has this year formed a dedicated sustainability team, drawing representatives from across every department of the business rather than treating it as the responsibility of one role or team.
Member of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance
Shropshire Petals is proud to be a member of the Sustainable Wedding Alliance. Joining gives us the chance to connect with others across the wedding industry who share our values, and to keep learning and improving how we do things on the farm.
More couples are thinking about the environmental footprint of their big day, and we want petal confetti to be one choice they can feel good about. But we don’t expect you to simply take our word for it. That’s why we’re now working towards accreditation with the Sustainable Wedding Alliance, so our practices are independently checked. Couples can explore the For Conscious Couples wedding supplier directory for lots of wonderful wedding professionals.
Training and Development
We're serious about our sustainability progress here in the Shropshire Petals shed, and we believe it all starts with the knowledge and passion within our team. We've taken part in the Small Business Britain Sustainability Basic Programme in partnership with Oxford Brookes Business School to help us on our journey.
We've investing in training and development at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership to help us take our next steps as a farm and a business.
As part of our ongoing development, members of our team have completed Carbon Literacy training with the Sustainable Wedding Alliance.
The course gave us a clearer picture of the carbon cost of everyday choices, and the knowledge and motivation to shrink our footprint, both as individuals and as a team. We explored the science behind the climate crisis, what climate justice means, and why our climate is where it is today.
We also looked at climate action in the workplace, from waste, energy and water to transport, suppliers and even our digital footprint.
Want to bring Carbon Literacy to your own team? Find out more and book your training through the Sustainable Wedding Alliance.
Our Circular economy
Whilst we are phasing our the range of recycable plastic packaging we offer, we know there is more work we need to do. We care about the post-consumer life of all our products which is why we developed a circular economy scheme, where we send a FREE returns label.
You can send back your empties ensuring your wedding packaging is either used again by another couple or recycled. Alternatively our remaining plastic products are PET plastic which can be widely recycled by yourself, or reused.
No wasteful paper
You may notice there is no invoice when your order arrives with you. All the info you need is in your order confirmation that's emailed over to you. We'd rather climb trees than cut them down.
Our Packaging
Our Dispatch boxes are from 80% recycled sources and use plant based inks. We even seal our boxes with eco-friendly paper tape.
All the packaging for our 1 litre, 5 litre, 10 litre bags and Individual sachets are carbon neutral and our lovely tissue paper and scent cards that come in your orders are FSC approved too. Even the clear windows in our 1, 5 and 10 litre bags of confetti are compostable. We're regularly making improvements to our packaging.
Compostable Samples
Did you know we offer confetti samples delivered to your door. Even our sample packets are compostable! So if you're struggling to choose a favourite confetti colour, you can order up to 5 colour samples online. Request your confetti samples online today.
Fairly Paid Workers
Working on a British flower farm might sound pretty idyllic, but it's tough work and takes dedication and a willingness to be outside even when it's raining cats and dogs! Our team work incredibly hard, especially so during the summer time, as it's our peak harvest time and also wedding season. We pay our team very fairly and treat them with respect, after all we're one big family. Without our skilled flower pickers, we wouldn't have any petals for confetti or dried flowers for bunches or arrangements.
Regenerative Farming
We're proud to be a British farm practising regenerative farming techniques to ensure we all have a bright future. We're a family run farm, so making sure we are making decisions and taking actions today, that mean the next generation can continue our hard work is incredibly important to us.
We’ve adopted several approaches to work toward a regenerative agriculture system including the use of cover crops, tree planting, hedge laying, creating reed beds for water run-off, effective field rotations, providing food for birds during the winter months, and beneficials by improving biodiversity and creating richer environments through stewardship around the fields, alongside working closely with our agronomist.
Green delivery
We use Royal Mail for the majority of our deliveries and they're the UK's greenest delivery company! Their emissions per parcel are 205g which is the lowest CO2 per parcel reported in the UK delivery industry. Around two thirds of their delivery routes are made purely on foot by twinkle-toed posties. Their postie-powered deliveries are lowering all our emissions and offering you, our valued customers a sustainable option. Well done Royal Mail!
These are just a few of the things we are doing but there is lots more in the pipe line and we are very excited to make lots of wonderful changes to help us on our way to being more sustainable.
