From Floral Waste to Sustainable Value: A Content Analysis of Sustainability Digital Communication in Dried Flower Businesses

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-620-8_8How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Sustainability Communication; Circular Economy; Creative MSMEs; Digital Storytelling; Instagram

Abstract

With the increasing adoption of circular economy principles, creative businesses have been compelled to convert garbage into goods with superior environmental and commercial value. Dried flower businesses are a new type of sustainable entrepreneurship through preservation and creative design that extends the life cycle of floral materials. While sustainability communication is gaining popularity, little is known about the use of digital channels by these organizations to communicate sustainability. This study examines the sustainability communication of the dried flower market by qualitatively content analyzing 100 Instagram contents from ten dried flower firms in Indonesia. The analysis was based on five coding dimensions: digital storytelling, resource efficiency, product longevity, reduction of waste and environmental responsibility. The results show that sustainability is communicated primarily through implicit narratives, and not through explicit environmental statements. Visual storytelling is a way for brands to create sustainable identities through artistic mastery, botanical preservation, emotional connection, and memory preservation. Resource efficiency and product longevity are often cited in product stories but we seldom observe any communication about waste reduction and environmental responsibility. Beyond the pre-defined coding categories the study revealed an emergent Artist-Flower-Memory Framework illustrating how sustainability is communicated through interwoven narratives of creativity, resource preservation and emotional continuity. This paradigm contributes to the sustainability communication literature by demonstrating that innovative MSMEs communicate circular economy values through narrative as opposed to conventional green marketing messages. The findings provide practical implications for creative entrepreneurs for creating authentic sustainability communication, and contribute to research in sustainability communication, circular economy and sustainable entrepreneurship.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Pijar Suciati
AU  - Tiffani Amanda Azzahra
AU  - Angela Kadek Aprilia Handayani
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/23
TI  - From Floral Waste to Sustainable Value: A Content Analysis of Sustainability Digital Communication in Dried Flower Businesses
BT  - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Vocational Education, Applied Science and Technology (ICVEAST 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 68
EP  - 90
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-620-8_8
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-620-8_8
ID  - Suciati2026
ER  -