National Plants at Work Week Recommends the 7×7 Plan

Urban Planters and National Plants at Work Week (NPWW) taking place between 13th – 17th July 2015 is recommending the 7 x 7 plan.

If you’re wondering what the 7 x 7 plan is it’s all about taking just seven minutes every day for seven days to engage with nature.

There are many ways you do this:

1. Making sure you have a plant on or near your desk and taking time to admire it

2. Take your coffee break outside or in a planted ‘break-out’ area

3. If you are lucky enough to have green space outside of your workplace, enjoy your seven minutes looking out at the space

4. Take a walk around the park

5. Buy a plant for you home office desk

6. Take a ‘greenie’ of your desk plant or you and your plant. Better still a short video and post them to Twitter using #plantsatworkweek

7. Plan how you can increase the 7 minutes a day once National Plants at Work Week is over

What’s the reason?

Here are seven good reasons why we should surround ourselves with plants at work or at school:

1. They are good for our general well-being

2. They reduce the time we take sick

3. Plants clean the air around us and refresh it with oxygen for us to breathe

4. They help to keep us stress free

5. Surprisingly plants make us more productive by as much as 12% – 38% …and more creative by 45%

6. Plants help to fulfill our need for nature (the biophilia concept recognised by Richard Louv)

Backed up by research

The recommendations are well backed up by research from around the world indicating just how reliant we are on plants for so much that we take for granted.

Which business doesn’t want to maximise productivity and reduce time taken off sick? Not to mention reducing any pollution in the air.  It is a well-known fact that we spend more time indoors than outdoors (roughly 90% indoors) and that air pollution indoors can be 10 times more polluted than outdoor air (Environment Protection Agency – EPA).

More scary are statistics that suggest that polluted air can cause premature deaths according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Get involved

If you want to learn more see www.urbanplanters.co.uk about how plants can have a positive influence on your life. You can also follow the activities of National Plants at Work Week on Facebook and Twitter using #plantsatworkweek.

We will be taking part by having pop up offices in various locations in cornwall during NPWW week  13th – 17th July keep you eye on twitter @LisaBaileyBrown for updates.