The real cost of a rose: Inside the billion-dollar global flower industry

The beautiful blooms we buy at the supermarket check-out can sometimes have a hidden price. In life’s big moments, we often reach for a bouquet of flowers, but many of us might not know what it takes to get them into our hands. Many of the flowers sold in Australia have been flown around the world before they get to us, kept in cold containers for hours, or even days. The blooms might have been grown in a high-tech, carbon-intensive greenhouse in Europe, or at an African mega-farm and often picked by workers making less than the minimum wage. In…