UPDATE: Since releasing this sketch, which is a fair summary of Kamal Meattle's TED talk, it's been made clear that, though plants do improve air the improvement doesn't compare with a simple change like opening the window. The original "plants improve air quality" study was done by NASA in an environment wholly unlike having a few plants in your living room. Listen to James Wong explain the situation in the Sketchplanations botany podcast.

In his 4 min TED talk, Kamal Meattle explains how to grow your own fresh air inside with just 3 common house plants. The areca palm works hard during the day, the mother-in-law’s tongue during the night, and the money plant cleans out volatile chemicals. He transformed the air inside a New Delhi office park by filling it with these three plants with seemingly some wonderful health and productivity benefits.

Though plants are undoubtedly lovely to add to your office and home, see the update above for the caution around it.

How to grow your own fresh air

A term coined by Mike Masnick, for what happens when you try and censor or suppress information: it draws attention to it.

It’s named Streisand after Barbara Streisand tried to have an aerial photo of her house removed from a set of California coastline photos intended to document coastal erosion. Views of the photo apparently went from 6 to 420,000.

The Streisand Effect

So, you finish a packet of crisps, or chips, and scrumple the packet up, but in just keeps uncrumpling and tries to blow away. No longer. This handy little bit of origami creates a neat and tidy little triangle that keeps your crisp packet behaving. Give it a try next time.

HT: Dave Barker taught me this about 20 years ago. I still find it useful.

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Tame unruly crisp packets