(MintPress)–How do I love thee? Let us count the ways. Valentine’s Day brings out our true romantic nature. In our expressions of love, Americans will spend about $13 billion per year on Valentine’s Day. On average we will spend $120 on Valentine’s Day gifts, but as we unwrap the heart shape chocolates and admire the roses just spare a thought to the environment and the damage this one day, creates.
Roses are red, violets are blue
Red roses were once an eternal symbol of romance and love used by poets, today they are now a mass marketed symbol used by Hallmark greeting cards. Through a lack of imagination, Americans will send their loved ones a bunch of red roses. As a nation we will buy 110 billion roses this Valentine’s Day causing developing countries like Kenya to experience a prevalence of waterborne diseases and pests and in Latin America the destruction of forest habitat.
The majority of flowers sold in the United States now come from Latin America. Colombia alone supplies 80 percent of cut flower imports. This year Colombia will air freight half a billion cut flowers by Valentine’s Day. The pressure on farmers to keep up with growing U.S. demands has led to lax regulations and exploitation on Columbia farms, pollution and destruction of forest ecosystems.
Despite many Latin American countries enacting pesticide regulations similar to those in the United States, “there’s no mechanism for enforcement,” said Alex Morgan, from the nonprofit organization Rainforest Alliance. Rose growers will routinely treat rose bushes with large doses of pesticides during the growing season, then chemically treat the cut flowers before transport. This heavy pesticide use has made the flower farmers infamous among local villagers — suffering from the fallout of pesticide pollution that can find its way into streams and rivers, destroying local ecosystems.
The rural landscape of Bogatas has changed to accommodate this multimillion dollar market. Its hillside of rainforest habitat and forest has been replace with huge greenhouses stretching miles into the scarred Colombia’s hillside landscape. Rainfall has made this region rich in vegetation, but has also threatened, the villages water supply, the run off from the farm has polluted local streams and rivers with pesticides.
In Kenya the picture is equally bleak. The great lake region of Naivasha in Kenya is under threat. There is a decline in water levels in the lake as more and more flower farmers increase their irrigation. Leaving Naivasha’s population of over 300,000 people having to rely on water from a few boreholes and springs, while the farmers collect water directly from the lake. With the decline in water there has also been a prevalence of waterborne disease caused by pesticides in drinking water. Affecting the young and the elderly first, villagers in this region have suffered from worms, diarrhea, hepatitis and some cases of typhoid.
But Valentine’s Day isn’t just about giving roses, it about sharing a romantic meal and enjoying the delight of chocolate.
Heart-shaped chocolates
While a romantic dinner for two is still very popular, 45 percent of Americans will go out and buy chocolate as a Valentine’s gift. Confectionists over the years have redefined what we can do with chocolate, creating state-of-the-art cakes. While we all enjoy the pleasures that chocolate can bring, there is a darker side to this business.
Palm oil is a troubling product; hidden in many foods, palm can in be found in baked goods, confectionery and chocolate. Palm oil is high in saturated fat, presenting health concerns to a nation already struggling with obesity and diabetes, but it also raises ecological concerns.
Today, almost all palm oil is produced in, and exported from, Indonesia and Malaysia, but most of the time not using sustainable measures. Thousands of kilometres of pristine rainforest is slashed and burned in order to make way for oil palm plantations; 750 orangutans were killed last year. This large-scale deforestation is pushing orangutans to extinction, along with many other native species of Borneo and Sumatra.
On Valentine’s Day confectionists will make $35 billion from the sale of chocolate, and companies like Monsanto will take a share of this profit. Monsanto has many hidden genetically modified by-products that confectionists will use in the making of chocolate. According to activist group, GMO inside, Hershey’s and Mars confectionary and chocolate makers use the most genetically-modified foods.
Soy Lecithin is just one the genetically-modified ingredients that appears in most chocolate bars. Soybeans as a rule are traded internationally either wholly or partially from genetically modified plants. GM soybeans are grown on a large scale in Argentina and the U.S., causing widespread GM contamination on farms supporting GM crops. Although some confectionist have tried to process their chocolate with conventional soya raw materials, as there are no guarantees that raw soybeans have not been contaminated with GM soybeans it is hard to declared to be “free of gene technology.”
Celebrating love
The marriage rate in the U.S has steadily declined over the years. In 1960, 72 percent of all American adults were married; in 2010 just 51 percent were. There are many economic and social reasons for the decline in marriage rates but holidays like Valentine’s Day put more pressure on people who made to feel inadequate if they can not form relationships. So more Americans are either not choosing to celebrate, or they are joining a growing number of people celebrating Valentine’s Day with their pets.
There is now a growing market for Valentine’s toys for pets, so instead of risking having your heart being broken by a lover, or being disappointed by a date, Americans are turning to their pets for affection.
But for couples, Valentine’s Day can be the most romantic evening, where you can give your lover a single red rose which starts its journey from a greenhouse in rural Colombia and traveled some 1,500 miles to the Miami International Airport, where as many as 35 flower-filled planes will land every day in the run-up to Feb. 14. It’s then delivered via refrigerated trucks to the florist shops. The carbon footprint that this token of love leaves on the planet is devastating. The air frieght of a red roses into the U.S. is adding more CO2 gas into the atmosphere and contributing to the breakdown of the ozone layer.
Valentine’s Day is a beautiful day where we can get to say and express our feelings to people we have grown fond of. It’s a day when we can give a token of our affection to lovers. It’s a day where we can experience the delights of sweets and desserts, but do we all have to do the same thing and buy the products? For the sake of the planet — why not try to celebrate your own unique Valentine’s Day.