At Hoek flowers we care about creating a sustainable workplace. Therefore, the Hoek flowers building not only looks good but is also rewarded with a green certificate! It was built with the highest standards of sustainable construction in mind. The building has very high insulation values which significantly reduce the ‘waste’ of heat in our offices and the ‘waste’ of cold in our cold rooms and packing area. But our facilities are sustainable in other ways as well!
The building is 100% gas-free. This means we do not need natural gas to heat our building, the water we’re using or even the stove in the company restaurant. Natural gas is a fossil fuel and its combustion leads to lots of CO₂ emission. This in turn cause temperatures to rise, warming the earth and leading to significant climate change. Since our building is 100% gas-free, our CO₂ emission is significantly reduced.
Let’s also talk about our roof because there is a lot happening there. Currently, our roof is covered with over 6.700 solar panels! Since not all our seasons are as sunny, we cannot cover the full 100% of our need for energy (yet). For now, we already generate 2.000.000 kWh a year, which covers 75% of the total energy we use. Our future goal is to cover a 100%... how cool (or better said - hot) would that be?
Hoek flowers installed a 4,000 square meter sedum roof in early 2023, the largest green roof in the area. It’s being studied by Naturalis and the University of Leiden to determine which plants attract the most insects, birds, and bees, and which types of green roofs benefit the environment the most. The roof purifies the air, supports wildlife, and helps save energy due to its insulating properties—truly a win-win!
Coffee, one of the most important things on early mornings. Here at Hoek flowers, we drink quite a few cups. Since we find it important that suppliers worldwide – whether we talk about flowers or coffee – get fair prices, all coffee at Hoek flowers is supplied by our local coffee roastery ‘Koffie Lovers’. They only work with Fair Trade certified farms and invest a part of their turnover in local communities to give something back to the countries they get their coffee beans from.
Our flowers from Colombia and Kenya are flown by KLM, the world’s most sustainable airline, using fuel-efficient technology and biofuels to reduce emissions. We also work with farms to minimize emissions per stem and continuously seek ways to improve packing and logistics with local and international suppliers to cut plastic use and pollution.
What if I told you that you can now get your favorite flowers from Colombia, Kenya, and South Africa even fresher? With Origin Direct, we fly them straight from the source to your country, skipping stops in Holland. This means fewer CO₂ emissions, faster delivery, fresher flowers, and better prices—a win-win for you, the flowers, and the planet!
We actively reduce emissions by using advanced software to carefully plan and optimize our delivery routes. By streamlining logistics, we minimize unnecessary travel, which not only lowers our CO₂ emissions but also ensures that your flowers arrive faster and fresher. This efficient approach helps us contribute to a greener planet while enhancing the quality of our service for you.
Growing and buying flowers carries great responsibility. Therefore, here at Hoek flowers, we collaborate with many growers who comply with the ‘#FSI basket of standards 2025'. FSI stands for Floriculture Sustainable Initiative and this organisation oversees certifications for social and environmentally friendly flower cultivation worldwide. We care about our planet and the people on it and we want to play our part in making sustainable flowers the global standard. That is why we are proud to work together with many great and certified farms where we know the growers personally.
Remembering all the certificates is difficult, so to make your life a little bit easier, we made an overview of the environmental labels you can find on our website.
