Our Story
Has something ever annoyed you so much you decide enough is enough, it’s time things change?
That feeling is what led me to sorting through tonnes of plastic flower sleeves in my spare time.
I was born to Dutch flower growers, cliché, I know. You
could say flowers run through my blood. Growing up, I
helped my parents in the glasshouse during my school
holidays, putting bunches of flowers into plastic sleeves
without thinking twice about it.
Everything changed when I started working at the local
flower auction in 2019. I saw the scale, thousands of
plastic-wrapped bunches moving through the system,
three times a week, 52 weeks a year. And almost all of it destined for landfill. I began waking up at night, overwhelmed by the thought of how much plastic the industry was sending to waste.
So I spoke to my dad, or, more accurately, I told him we needed to stop wrapping flowers in plastic. He agreed, but with one condition: I had to make it happen. That year, Norana Lilies switched to paper wraps.
I quickly realised paper wasn’t the answer. It doesn’t protect flowers well and it’s terrible for the environment in landfill. So I kept researching and in 2022, I found the solution: circularity. Specifically, Circular Plastics in the Netherlands, a system that collects used sleeves, recycles them, and remanufactures new ones from the same material.
I sent them an email. We had a meeting. Then more meetings.
We decided to bring the concept to New Zealand. A year later,
they gave me two options: a job with them, or the opportunity
to start my own business. I chose to start my own business.
In May 2023, I presented this vision to the local flower auction
and began collecting sleeves.
In June, I founded The Flower Loop (formerly Circular Plastics
NZ), I was 20 years old.
By October, I had partnered with a NZ-based recycler. In July
2025, we hit a milestone: 4.3 tonnes of flower sleeve plastic
diverted from landfill. And this is just the beginning. There’s still
so much more floristry plastic out there. My mission is to grow
our collection network, recycle more sleeves, and shift the entire industry toward a truly circular future.
It started because I was annoyed and decided to do something about it. It continues because I believe the future of flowers should be as beautiful as the blooms themselves, not buried in plastic.
