Office Plants Clean the Air and More

Are the workspaces in your office enlivened with potted plants that enhance the appearance of your office AND purify the air at the same time? Did you know that plants make for happier employees? This was the conclusion of a study that was detailed in the February 2008 issue of HortScience. Dr. Tina Marie Cade, associate professor of horticulture in the department of agriculture at Texas State University, did a survey of workers in Texas and the Midwest and found that plants in an office significantly impact a worker’s positive feelings of job satisfaction by as much as 20%.  Read a summary of the report in Science Daily. Also, an environmental scientist who worked for NASA in the 1970’s, Bill Wolverton, has done extensive studies on the effect of plants on air quality. He retired from government service and formed an environmental consulting firm.  In 1997, he published a book on how plants purify the air and create healthier environments for people. His advanced approach tackles the problems associated with sick-building syndrome and is being used in a prototype to clean the water and air conditioning systems in buildings using the natural abilities of plants. You can read more about it in the article on NASA’s Spinoff website.  

Our local green office committees have held plant sales from time to time. In our Sacramento office, we offered a lunchtime seminar on office plants and their care. I asked the plant lady who comes around periodically to care for the larger shrubbery in our lobby areas if she’d be willing to share her knowledge about plants and which ones are best for cleaning the air in office settings. I caught up with her at a moment when she was happily at work in our office tending to a healthy plant, and she said “yes”. She’s a master gardener from University of California, Davis and she owns her own plant business. I also asked if she’d be willing to sell plants at the seminar at a discount, and she said “yes” to that, too. It was one of the best-attended lunchtime talks we have hosted, and the plants for $10 and $15 apiece flew out the door.

Our committees have held their plant sales either by buying in bulk and reselling onsite at the office, or by growing plants from seeds. It’s an easy way to generate cash for supporting the sales of promotional items, such as reusable bags, compostable garbage bags, books for resale and so on. It’s a double win because the plants improve the aesthetics of the office workspace and do their jobs to make employees feel happier, healthier and more satisfied with their work. What could be better?!

Here’s a website that lists Dr. Wolverton’s Top Ten best plants for cleaning the air. These were on the plant lady’s list, too.