Are Fake Plants As Good As Real Plants?

Life is unpredictable. The rhythm of our daily lives can be interrupted without warning, and the trajectory of our entire lives can change in an instant. Despite our best efforts to pursue stable, secure lives, uncertainty is an inevitable bet when it comes to building relationships and increasing interdependencies with other living things, including our relationships with plants.

Are Real Plants More Healing Than Fake Plants

Plants can brighten a room and set the mood in a way that few objects can. But what about artificial plants that look remarkably real? Studies show that live houseplants can extend recovery time for hospitalized patients, improve concentration in the workplace, and even improve mood and mental health. Polyester stand-ins for plants can have very similar effects in waiting rooms and offices.

In places where plant care is too expensive, light is insufficient, or workers are in short supply, especially in facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes, the study shows that artificial plants can still get the job done. In surveys of patients, families, and staff, fake plants ranked lower than live plants, who preferred live plants, but all agreed that artificial plants were better than no plants at all.

Do fake plants have the same effects as real plants

For your health: Do fake plants have the same effects and benefits as real plants?
Plants do a lot of work every day that we take for granted because it is invisible to the naked eye. Plants are silent air cleaners, helping to filter harmful environmental pollution, maintain humidity in our homes, and literally increase the oxygen in our homes.

While fake plants are low maintenance, they don’t help clean our air or give back to society in a meaningful way like live plants do. Real plants run the risk of dying at some point, but they are biodegradable, so when their time is up, they go back to the cycle of decomposition, growth, and rebirth. Another benefit of a living landscape is that real plants provide shelter for other microbes, insects, and critters, and their root systems help prevent outdoor soil erosion, which functions by converting gases into oxygen, which helps fight climate breakdown.

If properly cared for, poly plants can outlive most of us, requiring only a light dusting of the leaves a few times a year. The downside, of course, is that the plastic of these fake plants is no good for the soil at the end of their lives, and it takes over 400 years to finally decompose.

Plants on a budget: Which are the cheapest?

Given that most artificial plants today are made of plastic, one would naturally assume that they are cheaper than real plants. But that’s not the case. We compared the cost of live and fake plants on major platforms, and depending on the size of the plant and its pot, most plants cost the same, whether they are made of plastic or live.

Artificial plants have their uses, no doubt. They come from ancient historical and cultural contexts, but as placeholders for real plants, they offer only a “better than nothing” that barely maintains appeal. Real, live plants show us a different way to relate, one that actively participates in growing and helping to heal the planet, rather than pollute it, so that we can share a richer (albeit unpredictable) life with each other.