Floral Angels (repurposing flower bouquets to help others)
Floral Angels (London) is a nice little nonprofit that delivers donated flower bouquets to hospices, care homes and shelters within London, working from New Covent Garden Market.
Millions of bouquets are bought each year for weddings, Valentine’s Day, funerals or events, then go in the bin after a day or two. This way the flowers are repurposed into beautiful arrangements, to cheer up people who can’t afford a bouquet of flowers, or who have nowhere to gift them one.
Only donate pet-friendly bouquets to homes with animal friends (many flowers including lilies, delphiniums, hydrangeas, rhododenrons and all bulbs are toxic to pets). Also never face indoor foliage to outdoor gardens, to help prevent birds flying into windows.
The Flower Bank (training young offenders to repurpose bouquets)
The Flower Bank (Barnet, London) is a social enterprise that works with young offenders, to repurpose donated flowers to care homes and local community places. Focusing on people with dementia.
The same organisation also picks up leftover food from supermarkets, and delivers it to local food banks.
Inspiration from Abroad: Random Acts of Flowers
Random Acts of Flowers was thought up, after the founder was in hospital, and was fortunate enough to have many people bringing him bouquets of flowers. Seeing that many others had no family so did not receive bouquets, he set up this non-profit that now repurposes millions of bouquets in the USA.
This organisation also recycles every part of the bouquets – ribbons, wire, foam, buckets, baskets, moss, stands and vases. It also repurposes overstock from local florists.
