Tulips...and a rant

I spent the morning volunteering at the People's Cafe, which is part of the Waste into Well-being project. I love helping there, but it left me perplexed as amongst the supplies collected from local supermarkets were two buckets of tulips, mostly not at their best and beyond the 'guaranteed to last 5 days'.  I used a few bouquets for table decorations (we like to create a proper cafe atmosphere), but then my mind pondered on the costs involved: tulip flowers (grown in the UK, as shown by the flag on the label, but where and how many miles have they travelled?)  plastic sleeves (recyclable in store, unknown destination beyond that), plus the old and decaying leaves and petals which went into our compost bin; actual cost of all bouquets £100+.  I know people like to have colourful flowers in the house and they bring joy as a gift, and otherwise these two buckets of tulips and plastic would have gone into landfill, but really, does this make economic sense, or am I just fed up with our wasteful society?