SAN ANTONIO — A summer spent working at an H-E-B floral department exposed teenagers Hannah Taylor and Ashley Walker to a sad fact of the nearly $105 billion global flower industry.
The San Antonio Express-News reports 45 percent of the blooms stocked by retail flower shops — including the lilies flown in from the Netherlands and the roses imported from Colombia and Ecuador — are thrown out before ever reaching a customer.
"We noticed during our internship that if flowers were not purchased within a few days they would be discarded due to the buildup of bacteria in the floral buckets," Taylor, 17, said.
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