Why are Houseplants Bad?

In a recent post I mused about the benefits of houseplants. Often, they are touted as good for your mental health, focus, and creativity. There are also many false claims about helping with air quality indoors, but this is grossly overstated. Either way, if you’re the kind of person who likes to grow houseplants then you probably experience at least some of the benefits associated with them. And you certainly don’t need me to tell you why you should grow some.

But truth be told, most of our general practices for growing plants are not great. While perhaps beneficial to our own wellbeing, most of what we do tends to have a negative environmental impact.  It is well known that synthetic fertilizers are a problem. But so much of what we do, and use can have just as great of an impact.

The soil (technically called potting media) is just as rife with conflict. These days, more and more people know about the harms of peat moss.

Peat moss is the most common ingredients in the ‘soil’ of our houseplants. It makes up the majority of the brown stuff our houseplants come in as well as the big old bag of soil we bought for repotting.

But the fact is, wetlands have to be drained and destroyed for peat moss to be harvested.  This turns a lot of people towards coco-coir.

Coco-coir is touted as a more “sustainable” alternative to peat moss. It is made from the leftover husks of coconuts and thus is a byproduct of wholly separate industry. But the eco-friendly claims often made by coco-coir fans doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny. Massive amounts of chemical runoff are created to properly process the coconut husks into coco-coir, polluting waterways and leading to destruction of other ecosystems. Also, the fine powder from the husks causes increased health risks for the workers including many debilitating lung diseases.  

Other areas of concern are the gross overuse of pesticides. I think many houseplant growers have been fooled into thinking that because a pesticide is organic then it is safe to use. This could not be further from the truth. All too often I see people bust out neem oil at the first sign of any issue. Hell I know a lot of plant influencers who think you should spray all your new plants down “just to be safe”

Not only does this overuse waste products that have high energy costs it actually makes the pesticide less effective over time. Meaning you will need more and more to deal with the same issue in the future and eventually future generations will not be able to use your preferred pesticide at all because we decided our half-dead plant we desperately wanted to keep alive in a environment it was not suited for was more important then the food security of people who are just being born.

I don’t want to be a downer. I grow tons of plants and want to see this hobby expand to as many people as possible. But I don’t want to gloss over the fact that there are many areas of our world that could really use some improvements.

I think houseplants can be a vehicle for environmental change. It can be an easy way to start the conversation around sustainability and our role in helping the planet. But the way it currently stands, we have a long way to go to get to that point. And we aren’t going to get there simply by hoping things get better.

So, what are some things we can do? As I have mentioned in previous posts composting at home is a great way to lower your requirements for fertilizers. It also upcycles your waste into something that is beneficial to the environment at large instead of having it rot in a landfill where it will actively cause harm. (Depending on where you live. Here in Germany almost everyone has access to bins for properly composting food waste and even if not, most of the trash is burned and that byproduct of heat is used to run generators. But many places in America if the food waste goes in the trash bin it ends up in a landfill where it will rot and release larger amounts of methane and other greenhouse gases thus our food waste becomes actively harmful for the environment)

We can also lower our reliance on pesticides by adopting methods of pest management such as IPM. IPM or Integrated Pest Management is a method of dealing with pests actively before they show up. This includes important factors such as improving your overall home environment, properly feeding plants, and one of my favorites, observation over quick action. This doesn’t mean you will never use pesticides again, but they are an absolute LAST resort to otherwise overwhelming conditions. NOT a first line of defense. Physical removal, beneficial predators, and improving environment area all great, low intensity methods for dealing with pests.

If you want to learn more about how to approach plant care in a more respectful and less invasive manner, then check out my book ‘Leave it the Fuck Alone’ Out now!