Valentine’s Day Roses Are Bad for Kenya

Posted on Feb 14, 2011

Flickr / Rrrrred (CC-BY)

Valentine’s Day naysayers now have another reason to disdain the day: It’s depleting Kenya’s water supply. Specifically, the cultivation of roses in the African nation for holiday sales in Europe is taking a toll on the local ecosystem.  —KA

The Guardian:

Consumer appetite for cut-price Kenyan roses for Valentine’s Day is “bleeding the country dry” by threatening the region’s precarious ecology, University of Leicester ecology and conservation biologist Dr David Harper warned. Harper has spent over 30 years researching wetland conservation at Kenya’s Lake Naivasha and said the growth of the flowers is draining the valuable water supply.

Seventy per cent of roses sold in European supermarkets come from Kenya, most from Naivasha. Harper called on UK supermarkets to show more concern about the health of the environment that the flowers come from.

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