A Case for Plants
While indoor plants cost less than most alternative corporate decorating choices, they offer a guarantee of positively enhancing perception and your corporate image.
Plants release moisture in an office environment, creating a humidity level matching the recommended human comfort range of 30% to 60%. A comfortable office environment is more conducive to productivity.
Employees perceive buildings with interior plants as more expensive-looking, more welcoming and more relaxed. Employees with positive perceptions are less likely to seek employment elsewhere.
Polluted indoor air, contaminated by volatile organic compounds (VOCs), are a major cause of headaches, nausea, sore and itchy eyes, loss of concentration and other “sick building” symptoms.
The indoor environment is 5 to 10 times more polluted than the exterior.
Plants have been proven to remove airborne harmful contaminants.
The simple addition of interior plants is a natural way to help remove these pollutants significantly.
Mr. Ron Wood, a research associate with the Environmental Quality Group at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, provides a comprehensive list of reasons why interior plants are key to cost effectively improving indoor environmental quality while contributing to sustainable, green building designs:
- Plants are cheaper to use than powerful air filter systems.
- Plants can easily be moved or relocated.
- Plants are environmentally friendly.
- Plants offer aesthetic stimulants to the people in a room.
- Plants do not cause acoustic problems.
- Plants do not interfere with ventilation systems that are already installed.
- With professional care, plants provide high results at relatively low maintenance costs.
- Plants support good motivation by creating a balanced working environment.
- Plants can be used as attractive room dividers in open plan offices.
- Plants reduce tiring of the eyes by reflecting the yellow/green spectrum.
- Introducing plants requires no change to the structure of a building.
- Plants can discretely solve an environmental problem.
- Plants possibility of a sudden breakdown is relatively low.
Humans are inherently connected to nature, and having beautiful, healthy plants around you not only cleans the air from toxins, but also increases productivity and enhances your mood.
“There is, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us to trees and plants.” Michel de Montaign