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When Bloomberg Television sat Robert down for a CEO interview in New York in 2011, it introduced Organic Bouquet as the world's first "eco-florist." The question everyone asked back then was simple: why organic?
His answer goes back to the 1980s. He started in the industry at fourteen, working the packing sheds on a farm in Central Florida. His first boss cared about the environment before it was fashionable. Outside the greenhouse he fought insects with soap and water and weeds with rock salt. Inside, the crew sprayed chemicals that are banned today, and took off their shirts and shoes so the overspray would not soak their clothes. Everyone worked that way.
In the early 1990s Robert went to Ecuador to buy flowers and saw the same thing at a far larger scale: workers soaked in chemicals with no protection, paid very little. That trip is where "why organic" became personal.
Robert McLaughlin, founder, Explore Fresh and Florida Fresh
After years of selling organic flowers, Robert tells people that organic is not the brass ring. It is a good practice and he supports it, but a certified organic fertilizer can still burn a worker's skin, and an organic label says nothing about whether the people who grew a flower were paid a fair wage or went home safe. So "why organic?" leads to better questions:
How was it grown, and what was sprayed on it?
Who grew it, and how were they treated?
How did it get here?
Can the business doing this afford to keep doing it?
Those four questions are what sustainability means. They are also why this site exists. Read about the three pillars.
"Organic is a valuable growing practice we support, but we should not mistake it as sustainable in and of itself."Robert McLaughlin, Authority Magazine, 2021
A few of the moments that shaped how Robert thinks about sustainability, and how Explore Fresh teaches it.
Salesmen visited the farm villages in Ecuador selling pots, pans and clothing on credit at more than 80% interest, returning every week to collect. Workers could never get ahead. A grower Robert knew helped his workers set up their own savings and low-interest lending program, run by the workers themselves. It showed Robert that when we buy from a farm, we are responsible for more than the flowers.
Robert McLaughlin and Adriana Velasco at Nevado Ecuador, a Fair Trade and Flor Ecuador certified rose farm, July 20, 2007.On the Fair Trade farms Robert bought from, 12% of retail sales went back to an account controlled by the workers, who decided together how to spend it. His caption on the photos he took there was short: "These are people that matter."
Illustrative photo. These are not the girls from the program.Organic Style bought the cotton scraps left over at the mill in Kochi, India, where its sheets were made, and paid to have them sewn into gift bags. Families near the mill often could not afford to send their daughters to school. The company reported that the purchase sent 300 girls to school for the first time.
When Orlando Home & Leisure visited Organic Style's Maitland office in 2009, the writer noticed that Robert's desk, bookcase and conference table were all made of corrugated cardboard. The magazine concluded the team took the save-the-planet stuff seriously, and made money convincing customers to take it seriously too.
Google Hot Trends on February 12, 2010, the afternoon of The View segment.On February 12, 2010, Organic Bouquet flowers were featured on ABC's The View as a best buy for Valentine's Day. By that afternoon Google ranked Organic Bouquet the hottest search in the nation, and the site logged more than 3 million page views. Give people a responsible choice that is also beautiful and they take it.
The Queen B III at Port Manatee, the day it arrived, June 2021.In June 2021 Manatee Fresh brought its first ocean-shipped delivery of sustainably grown flowers from Mexico into Port Manatee: nearly 500,000 blooms in a refrigerated container. Flowers almost always fly, and the company cited air freight as polluting 20 to 30 times more than shipping. Making it work took two and a half years: learning ports and routes, finding growers willing to try it, and finding customers for a whole container of flowers. Proof that a supply chain can change when someone is willing to try.
In that 2009 Orlando interview, Robert said every product his company sold had a story: "there's a sense of source in every product." He called the company's choices "Choices That Matter." Both lines became the names Explore Fresh and Sense of Source use today.
In 2015 Goodwill Industries of Central Florida hired Robert as its first Chief Sustainability Officer. The starting point was a number: Goodwill was spending more than $750,000 a year on energy across its stores, Job Connection Centers and donation sites in six counties. The answer was Solar for Good, U.S.-made solar arrays planned for nine locations, beginning with the roof of the Waterford Lakes store. Every dollar saved on power was a dollar for the mission: Goodwill estimated the savings could fund job training and placement for 14,000 more Central Floridians by 2040. The program went on to raise $520,000 in grants, and WESH 2 News covered the installations across Central Florida.Source: Goodwill Industries of Central Florida, April 2015
Robert trains event teams in Orlando at no cost.
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SUSTAINABLE EVENTS. CHOICES THAT MATTER.