When it comes to biodiversity and how our ecosystem functions, bees are the buzzword (pun totally intended). Without bees, plant pollination can’t happen. No pollination means no fruit and its resulting seeds. And that means the plant can’t reproduce. Now imagine this happening everywhere on the planet.
Cecile Lochard, Guerlain’s chief sustainability officer, says close to 75 per cent of cultivated plants and 90 per cent of wild flowering plants depend on pollinators, which are mostly bees. “By pollinating flowering plants, bees guarantee the reproduction of numerous plant species and no less than one third of the world’s food supply,” she says.
Unfortunately, bee numbers all across the world have been dwindling, and this endangers the world’s biodiversity. Take honeybees, for example, their mortality rate is now 30 per cent, which means three out of 10 bees die every year.
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So why does the French beauty brand feel so passionately for the humble bee?