What has sustainability got to do with… air freshener?

Editors' blog

Hannah Bullock, 5 Nov 2008

The low winter sun that blinded me from behind the City buildings did look s...

Hannah Bullock sniffs the breeze - and comes up snarling

“These flowers smell like poo spray!”

A first time shock for a schoolboy in my local park, as he stuck his nose deep into the roses. I knew where he was coming from. I’m not so keen on clementines since our office has been using a ‘citrus zest’ air freshener.

What is it with 21st century humans and the need to sweeten our surroundings all the time? In an ongoing battle with fug we’re coming to depend on some strange substitutes for fresh air. Floral scents in the loo, Magic Trees in the car, and Air Wicks in the hall, pumping out fragrance every ten minutes... It’ll “personalise your atmosphere” says the box. I do wonder just how many homes in Britain now smell of ‘Crisp Breeze’. Welcome to Clone Town, where the houses even smell the same.

“Is that a whiff of dichlorobenzene in the air, darling, or just the hyacinths blooming early again?”

And once you know what goes into the stuff, it doesn’t so much conjure up a ‘Spring Day’ as men in lab coats stirring vats of smells. Is that a whiff of dichlorobenzene in the air, darling, or just the hyacinths blooming early again?’

Isn’t it ironic that in our search for really fresh air, we put together a cocktail of chemicals and add them to the rest of the stale stuff floating around our rooms? Isn’t it, in fact, sick - literally? Use them too much, say researchers, and you could find yourself suffering from headaches and depression. So much for lifting your mood.

OK, so we don’t all have the luxury of being able to open the window in our bathroom or office. But if it’s purer air we’re after - with the stale smoke and the toxic particles from printers, tellies and fire-retarded sofas actually taken out - you can’t do much better than the humble pot plant. That’s not some old wives’ tale, but the official word from NASA.

Of course a spider plant isn’t quite as seductive as a fragrance. Especially when their names promise so much; that you can sit in your suburban lounge and taste that Alpine Breeze (cheaper than a ski trip); that you can capture the freshness of wind-dried cotton just by sticking a Bounce dryer sheet the machine (easier than hauling the laundry out to the line).

Oh if only they could bottle and release those fleeting moments. If the ‘After the Rain’ label really did conjure up the earthy smell of pollen grains on dry pavements... Alas, bottling the essence of stone - ‘petrichor’ - was beyond even the olfactory gifts of the gruesome anti-hero of Perfume.

Yet the distiller’s quest continues. And it goes far beyond the corridors of the pharmaceutical companies. One man with a nose for business is selling bottles of air from Snowdonia, complete with gift presentation box (www.walesinabottle.com ). For there was a time when lungfuls of clean air were an essential remedy for urbanites. East Enders would head off to the tip of Southend pier for their annual dose.

Today, the antidote to London life is the aquamarine Med slithering its way through the traffic on the side of a bus. Less about air than sun, sand, sea and s...lowing down.

But imbibing purity still holds a certain attraction for city dwellers, who are being tempted with a short-term fix on their doorstep. Real air in a bottle. Or a constituent of air, at any rate. Bottled oxygen may be more expensive than Evian, but promises a ‘natural high’ - especially if taken with vodka (for that read ‘a bit like getting pissed up Everest’). When smoking is finally banned in the bars that sell the stuff, maybe this could be the 21st-century seaside pier.

Hannah Bullock is Green Futures deputy editor.