'I want to make our company ready for the future'

For us it is something natural: we try to grow our lilies as energy-efficient and sustainable as possible. This is also important to me personally, because I want to make our company ready for the future. Ready to pass on to the next generation. I am still young, have no children, yet I do think about that. That is why sustainability is high on the agenda, both in terms of energy consumption and our way of producing, as well as the cardboard coffee cups in the canteen and the company clothing of our staff.

Everyone, of course, is talking about the energy transition. We too are in the middle of it. There are now solar panels on all our barns and roofs, some four thousand in all. We supply the green power we generate in excess to many households. And in the future the plan is to heat our greenhouses with geothermal heat. That's not so easy, by the way. But now it appears that our neighbor has also started such a project and together we could develop a kind of heat traffic circle, with which you exchange heat.

We don't take water from the soil, because we use 100% rainwater. That water circulates in a closed water system, there is no discharge. So with our lily production we don't deplete the soil and there are no waste streams. Furthermore, we are experimenting a lot with LED lighting. Right now we light our lilies with gas lamps, but step by step we are switching over. With LED we save as much as fifty percent energy. Another energy saving is a second energy cloth; a kind of insulation cloth on the ground, which keeps the cold out. With such a second cloth it stays even better warm in the greenhouses, which makes a difference of twenty-five percent.

And then, of course, we have the protection of our lilies: we want to let nature take its course and no longer use chemical pesticides. Our lilies grow with the help of wild insects; critters that make sure there is no pest in the greenhouse.

Making our company as sustainable as possible is an ongoing process. Not a quick fix, but a long-term vision. For our company, sustainability is a question of good stewardship: taking good care of our earth, both for people, plants and animals. Our goal is not to make as much return as possible, but rather as sustainable a return as possible. To this end, we make in-depth investments for the future. Ideally, we want to become the most sustainable lily company in the Netherlands and thus deliver the most sustainable flowers on the shelf!

Our employees dressed in sustainable corporate clothing? These are partly made from recycled PET bottles and sustainable cotton that lasts a long time. In this way, we try to do our bit on all fronts.

Peter Evers (30), having graduated from Horti Business and Management, is co-owner of Bredefleur.