The Social Medicine Portal

Alternative Valentine’s Day: No gold, No diamonds, No flowers?

As Valentine’s Day approaches consumers are importuned to purchase flowers and various other tokens of love. Our colleague Martin Donohoe, editor of the Public Health and Social Justice website passed on to us some materials looking impact of flowers, diamonds and gold on workers’ health and the environment.  His concerns challenge us to think of less harmful, less exploitative ways of showing affection (see below).

Dr. Donohoe’s arguments were presented in a 2008 article published in the Health and Human Rights Quarterly entitled: Flowers, Diamonds, and Gold: The Destructive Public Health, Human Rights, and Environmental Consequences of Symbols of Love.  Here we will briefly summarize his arguements.

Flowers:

About 190,000 people in the developing world are employed in the global floriculture industry.   Most of the workers are women with low paying, no benefit jobs.  “Child labor, dismissal from employment due to pregnancy, and long hours of unpaid overtime are common, especially before holidays such as St. Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.”

Floriculture is also the largest consumer of pesticides, one fifth  of which are either untested or banned in the US.  Workers in greenhouses may be exposed to particularly high levels of pesticides.   Proper conditions for the handling and removal of pesticides may not exist.  All of this has health consequences for the workers.   [For a powerpoint version of this information see Dr. Donohoe’s presentation Floriculture Industry: Thorns without Borders.

Diamonds

The exploitation of diamond workers has long been well documented, see for example the report by Global Witness on poverty diamonds in Africa. What has become clearer in the past few years is the role of so-called conflict diamonds in fueling political turmoil in Africa as well as financing Al Qaeda.

Gold

Like diamonds, gold miners work in “the world’s most deadly industry.”  Ironically, gold mining areas often show slower rates of sustainable economic development.   Gold mining has tremendous ecological consequences.  A single 18 karat gold ring is estimated to produce eighteen tons of waste.

For a general overview of the impact of mining on communities, see Oxfam’s report Dirty Metals: Mining, Communities, and the Environment.

Dr. Donohoe’s article ends with suggestions (which we have supplemented) for alternative non-exploitative, non-harmful ways of expressing love:

Flowers: Various unsuccesful attempts have been made to create eco-labels for flowers.  One that is still in existence is Veriflora.  In 2008 the Organic Consumers Association offered suggestions for where consumers could obtain organic flowers.  Of course, the best alternative to cut flowers is to grow them yourself.  For those of us who live in cities we are fortunate that there are now many urban gardens.  Our colleague Julianna Mantay at Lehman has actually mapped community gardens in the Bronx (see Urban Agriculture/Urban Oases in the “Concrete Jungle”:  The Culture of Community Gardening in the Bronx).  Unfortunately, community gardens are not the solution to flowers in February in New York City.  But they can be grown indoors.

Gold and Diamonds: The No Dirty Gold Campaign asks consumers to sign a pledge asking for reforms in the gold mining industry.

The article concludes:

Consumers should reconsider the entire concept of purchasing cut flowers, gold and diamonds as symbols of their affection. These symbols are not
universal and have not been constant throughout history, but rather are cultural constructs extensively perpetuated by the persuasive marketing efforts of multinational corporations. The visible reminders of one’s love should not also represent environmental destruction, violence, the subjugation of native peoples, child labor, and human rights abuses.

Substitute gifts include cards (ideally printed on recycled paper), poems, photos, collages, videos, art, home improvement projects, homemade meals, and donations to charities. Consider alternatives to the traditional diamond engagement and gold wedding rings, such as recycled or vintage gold: old gold can be melted down and made into new jewelry. Other options include eco-jewelry made from recycled or homemade glass and coconut beads. Purchasing handicrafts constructed by indigenous peoples from outlets that return the profits to the artisans and their communities provides wide-ranging social and economic benefits. Such tokens of affection will be rendered more meaningful through their lack of association with death and destruction and because they symbolize justice and hope for the future.

Taking up Dr. D’s  suggestion of giving poetry for Valentine Days,  here is a love poem from the Roman poet Catullus.  It suggests yet another way of showing love.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
and let us judge all the rumors of the old men
to be worth just one penny!
The suns are able to fall and rise:
When that brief light has fallen for us,
we must sleep a never ending night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.
Then, when we have made many thousands,
we will mix them all up so that we don’t know,
and so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds out
how many kisses we have shared.

posted by Matt Anderson, MD