Do houseplants help the environment?
Answer: Yes, but how much?
Many people buy houseplants to do their part for the environment, or to make their home's air quality better. But how much do houseplants actually help?
how much do they help?
Though plants are clean the air of toxins and greenhouse gasses, it is ineffectual at the level of houseplants. Forests clean our air, but you would need 10 plants per square foot in order to make a difference on air quality.
If everyone had a few houseplants, i'm sure it would help a lot, so keep your plants an get more. We just can't let ourselves think that we can neglect the environment, and houseplants are going to fix it for us. We also can't replace necessary air filters, for a few plants.
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how and why
During photosynthesis, plants seperate CO2 into oxygen and carbon, using the carbon, and releasing the oxygen into the air. Normally 32g oxygen is released per every 150g of plant matter. During respiration, the opposite occurs. All cells are constantly respiring, which greatly impacts the amount of oxygen released, and CO2 absorbed.
The reason the myth exists is because in Kindergarden we were taught that the trees and plants in our world make the oxygen we breathe, breathe in CO2, and filter toxins out of the air, which is all true, but as Kindergardeners, most of us don't realize the trillions of plants it takes to oxidize our atmosphere.
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