a mountain of plastic pots

I had a moun­tain of unwanted plas­tic pots, mostly in the 3–5 inch size, left­overs from when I was grow­ing more than just a few orchids around the house. The pots were used, a lit­tle old, but basi­cally func­tional. I couldn’t part with them–who knows when I’d need them? After a cou­ple years of goad­ing from John, a cou­ple hun­dred of them went to the land­fill last fall.

Then I heard about the Mis­souri Botan­i­cal Gar­den hav­ing a great idea. They’ve started up a pro­gram to recy­cle those unwanted left­over plas­tic pots into some­thing useful.

Gar­den pots and trays have been recy­cled into land­scape tim­bers, use­ful for build­ing retain­ing walls and land­scape bor­ders. Each tim­ber mea­sures 7-inches X 9-inches by 8.5 feet long, weighs 280 pounds, and lasts for up to 50 years.

Well, yeah, Mis­souri would be a lit­tle far to go next time I have a pile of pots I need to part with. But I’ll be a lit­tle more dili­gent in look­ing around for more sus­tain­able solu­tions than dump­ing them!

April 06 2008 03:06 pm | Categories: gardening | Tags: • •

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