As the green industry continues to mature, differentiation is an increasingly important business strategy [26]. One way to accomplish this is by adopting environmentally friendly behaviours that will attract consumers with environmental awareness [27,28,29]. These potential consumers are more likely to purchase environmental friendly products with reduced CO₂ footprints [3,26]. There is a small, but considerable, percentage of people who were willing to pay more money for agricultural products associated with sustainable, eco-friendly cultivation procedures [25,30]. Mainstream consumers were willing to buy eco-friendly products, but only at a modest price difference. Special attention should be given to consumer education and other promotion-related programs based on partnership between universities and private bodies (i.e., Texas Superstar^®) to increase sales of new cut ornamental products [31]. Growers were also willing to adopt eco-friendly practices in cultivation, although they were sceptical on the implementation within their current cultivation system [32]. Back in 2010, Dennis et al. [32] reported that none of the grower respondents in their survey were certified as sustainable.

The recognition of floricultural products as “sustainable” is complex and demanding. Sustainable production is achieved via the implementation of strict environmental and social protocols as defined by the national and international directives [11,33]. Restrictions on CO₂ footprints and global warming potential (GWP) may affect production of cut flowers in the future [33,34]. Over a public demand for cleaner agricultural products, the sustainable SCF cultivation may serve as the environmental friendly alternative option. This can be a major strength of SCF compared to TCF (Table 2). Wandl and Haberl [35] showed that summer and spring SCF grown outdoors had <0.1 kg CO_{2 eq}, while rose cultivation produced up to 13-fold more kg CO₂. The main differences in CO₂ production between the SCF and TCF were associated with excessive heating and electricity use “off-season” (i.e., the cold days of the year). Life cycle assessments (LCA) showed that increased CO₂ outputs for the production of roses, chrysanthemums, and gerberas were profound in Central and Northern European countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria [35,36,37,38]. Significant differences in CO₂ footprints, acidification, global warming, human toxicity, marine ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and phytochemical oxidation were reported for roses produced in Dutch greenhouses compared to those produced in Ecuadorian facilities [33,38]. While CO₂ for roses produced in Kenya and Ethiopia ranged between 0.4 and 3.7 kg CO_{2 eq}, the Dutch roses released 16–29 kg CO_{2 eq} [37]. In Greece, the cultivation of carnations in non-heated greenhouses produced only 0.316 kg CO_{2 eq} [39], indicating that heating during winter is the single most important factor contributing to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As a result, future environmental legislations will apply limitations to TCF cultivation at traditional production centres, or may help in shifting production of TCF to countries in the African continent or at South America [33,34,40,41,42].

Fertilization and agrochemical use both contribute to the environmental outputs during cultivation. Growers of TCF support the integrated nutrition management (INM) and integrated pest and disease management (IPDM) programs to reduce their environmental footprints [33]. However, pesticide residue levels in roses, gerberas, and chrysanthemums highly concerned authorities and consumers in the EU in the past decade. In a study conducted in Belgium, 107 active ingredients were detected in harvested rose, gerbera, and chrysanthemum bunches [43]. Among them, roses were the most contaminated flowers with 14 distinct substances detected per sample and a total concentration of 26 mg kg⁻¹ for a single rose sample. Substances such as acephate, methiocarb, monocrotophos, methomyl, deltamethrin, etc., could generate direct toxic effects to the nervous system of florists and consumers [43]. No research was found on pesticide residues detected on SCF. Generally, SCF suffer fewer fungal and pest contaminations during production, and therefore require minimal amounts of phytochemicals. SCF crop rotation and seasonal production might be the key to less infections and herbivore attacks. In every case, the implementation of IPDM to ornamental crop production may eventually reduce pesticide residues and improve the profile of the floricultural products.