Ben on Kamal Meattle: How to grow your own fresh air

Talk:
Kamal Meattle: How to grow your own fresh air

Brief Synopsis:
Kamal says that, with proper maintenance, if you keep about 11-13 commonly available plants in a space (4 "areca palms", 6-8 "mother-of-tongue" plants, and (1?) "money plant"), you can close yourself up in an airtight container and survive indefinitely. This number of plants is per person.

Kamal talks about the statistics of health improvmenets in his office building in Dehli, India, where he implemented this. They are quite compelling.

Ben on Kamal:
The number of plants needed for say, someone in their own apartment (I rent a small studio apt) or office (I have a small office at UCSD) may seem a bit overwhelming, but for larger buildings and communities, it seems doable. It clearly sounds worthwhile.

One concern not addressed in the talk is the amount of water needed to make this happen. As discussed in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" (among other places, of course), fresh water is going to be an issue in for an increasing number of people. If we implement Kamal's plan on a large-scale basis, seems that this will only increase such pressure. Furthermore, while it is orders of magnitude more energy efficient to drink tap water over bottled water, tap water takes energy to deliver.

Takeaway:
I'll see if it's possible to do this in my apartment. I'm terrible at watering and worse at maintenance, so I'm nervous about the needs of these plants. But I can try.

Rating: ***