Antonio Torres lays down a flat of small pots filled with soil while working on a potting plant at Delray Plants in Venus on Tuesday. Delray Plants, which sells wholesale to retail outlets like Kroger, Wal-Mart and Home Depot, makes up a large part of Highlands County's ornamental plant industry.
Will someone please explain to me what is "green" about this photo from the article linked below?
If the indoor plant industry really wants to be green, they should provide consumers with information that will keep their so-called green plants alive. Instead of dumb drain hole, finger poking nonsense they should provide consumers with information about the benefits of modern sub-irrigated planter systems (SIPs).
Green should be to make "houseplants" more user friendly, long lived and sustainable. Now that's a green word!
Instead of sustainable, this industry wants to market its products as a consumable health aid. They simply don't get the present day meaning of green.
Read this comment by Clem Cirelli, a well-respected professional interior plantscaper.
SEBRING - Be nice to that yellow, underwatered ivy. It's improving your air quality. And it might even make you happier.
Nurseries are signing on to the Green Plants for Green Buildings campaign, said Mike Waldron, a plant buyer for Delray Plants in Venus.
"Some new (University of Georgia) studies are going to be released that will quantify how effectively they remove carbon from the air," said Waldron. "Plants clean dirty air. We're trying to push that like the citrus industry has pushed the benefits of orange juice."
There are other studies:
•Penn State research focuses on how foliage plants mitigate indoor ozone.
•The National Gardening Association reports 79 percent of U.S. households gardened in 2002, making it the most popular outdoor hobby.
•Rutgers University shows flowers make women smile: "Women who received flowers reported more positive moods three days later. In Study 2, a flower given to men or women in an elevator elicited more positive social behavior than other stimuli. In Study 3, flowers presented to participants elicited positive mood reports and improved episodic memory."
The question for Delray Plants, the 15th largest nursery in the U.S., according to greenhousegrower.com: exactly which plants remove the most carbon and ozone?
"This is good for the industry," said Highlands County horticultural extension agent John Alleyne. "They have found that carbon intake has tripled."
The University of Georgia study mentioned in the article probably refers to the infamous "Project Carbon" research by Dr. Bodie Pennisi of that institution and funded by a grant from the National Foliage Foundation. Its goal was to quantify the ability of interior foliage plants to "remediate" Carbon dioxide levels in indoor spaces.
Funny, I think I learned in the third grade that live plants remove Carbon dioxide from the air all day long...it's called "photosynthesis"! But I guess that's too old-school for the year 2010..."carbon remediation" is MUCH sexier. And until a federal court ruled that the EPA could legally classify Carbon dioxide as an "air pollutant" awhile back, all of us exhaled large quantities of the stuff with every breath we took, none the wiser that we were all guilty of violating the Clean Air Act!
Anytime you find yourself feeling mystified about the head-shaking silliness of this kind of "greenwashing", just repeat to yourself, over and over in the manner of Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz, "Follow the money...follow the money...follow the money."
Posted by: Clem Cirelli, Jr. | September 02, 2010 at 10:39 PM