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What Can I do? Suggestions and Solutions for Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling Agricultural Plastics Reuse Plant Pots Scrubbing each plant pot in a 10 percent bleach solution, reusing plant containers to start seeds, and donating clean pots to schools and organizations are simple ways to reuse plant plastics. Return Pots and Trays to Local Nurseries and Garden Centers Inquire whether your local garden center or nursery accepts returned plant containers and trays. Some growers package plants in returnable containers. Pennsylvania Pride™ tree and shrub containers, for example, may be returned to the garden center where purchased. Explore Your Town’s Waste Management Recycling Practices Find out what plastic your town recycles, with whom it contracts for waste disposal and recycling, and its method for plastic plant container recycling. Simply call your town office, or visit www.earth911.org for a list of recycling practices by zip code. If you are displeased with your town’s existing practices, exercise your right to petition; be proactive. Investigate Reused Plastic Plant Containers Stonyfield Farm of Derry, N.H., has partnered with TerraCycle, a New Jersey company dedicated to the elimination of waste, in a pilot program to collect 5 million yogurt containers to reuse as plant pots. Visit www.terracycle.net for more information about these and other garden-related products in recycled TerraCycle packaging. Find Alternatives to Plastic Alternatives to plastic pots include Strawpots, made of rice and coconut fiber, and Ellepots™, which are paper fiber tubes filled with potting soil, and may be planted directly in the ground. Quansett Nurseries, Inc., a wholesale grower of perennials and annuals based in South Dartmouth Mass., is the only certified grower of Ellepots in New England, and sells to garden centers. Inquire whether your garden center will be making the switch to Ellepots or other natural alternatives.

Sources Scenic Nursery & Landscaping Raymond, N.H. 603 895-0236 Carpenter’s Olde English Greenhouse & Florist Newmarket, N.H. 603 659-3391 Quansett Nurseries, Inc. S. Dartmouth, Mass. 508 636-6931 Stonepost Nursery, LLC Raymond, N.H. 603 244-2453 Van Berkum Nursery, LLC Deerfield, N.H. 603 463-7663

As a professional gardener I generate between 500 and 1,000 plant containers a week during the busy gardening months. But when I attempted to recycle the dirty plastic pots, my local transfer station told me that while they technically accept all plastic containers, the company that handles their recycling refuses to take dirty plant pots. I was asked not to bring plant containers to the transfer station in the future.

Since then, on any given day, I drive with a truck-bed full of non-returnable plastic I cannot bring myself to throw away. When the bed is full, I start a pile at home, a private landfill of sorts, and my daily reminder of gardening’s dirty secret: For every patch of personal paradise I and other professionals and home gardeners create, scores of plastic plant containers are dumped in area landfills.

“Everyone realizes the contradiction in what we’re doing,” admits Fred Dabney, owner of Quansett Nurseries, a wholesale grower in South Dartmouth, Mass. He and other nursery owners are taking steps to solve this dilemma [Click here for a list of suggested solutions], but the challenge is daunting. According to a 2004 Penn State University study, 320 million pounds of plastic are used each year in the United States to produce plant pots, packs, and flats. That’s roughly a pound of plastic per person per year manufactured to beautify local living spaces at the expense of global health.

Plant plastic is especially problematic because it is dirty, which means it has to be cleaned before it can be reused or to recycled.

“Unless cleaned, agricultural plastic with a lot of dirt and debris in it causes serious damage to plastic extrusion dies (the method used to process plastic material) and other manufacturing equipment,” according to Donald Maurer, supervisor of the Solid Waste Technical Assistance Section of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES). Recycling companies are reluctant to invest in equipment that may be damaged by dirty plastic. To Maurer’s knowledge, there isn’t a company in New England fully equipped to clean and recycle dirty plastic plant containers.

Plant pots can’t simply be reused because growing plants in unwashed or unsterilized containers threatens plant health. “In order to reuse returned plastic containers, we need to get rid of disease spores and weed seeds left in the used pot,” says Peter van Berkum, owner of Van Berkum Nursery in Deerfield, N.H.

Peter and his wife, Leslie, have implemented a return policy at Van Berkum, accepting empty containers from plants originally purchased from the nursery. Van Berkum cleans the pots for reuse with a “great big dip” that soaks and sterilizes a pallet load at a time.

Scenic Nursery and Landscape owner Glenn Caron of Raymond, N.H. says it is both cost-effective and environmentally responsible to reuse plant pots and trays, and he encourages his customers—homeowners and landscapers—to return plastic to the nursery. Caron’s staff cleans and reuses as many containers as possible, thus reducing the cost and environmental impact of purchasing new plastic pots.

Unfortunately, many local garden centers and nurseries do not accept returned plant containers because it is cost-prohibitive to clean and sterilize them.

While Rob Carpenter, of Carpenter’s Olde English Greenhouse and Florist in Newmarket, N.H., cannot accept returned plant pots, he gives away old greenhouse plastic covering to homeowners to protect their wood pile or boats for winter. Carpenter also invites his customers to return plastic and cardboard trays, which can be reused or recycled easily. Other garden centers similarly accept trays.

Non-agricultural companies that sell products in plastic pots are exploring creative solutions to the plant container conundrum. Stonyfield Farm of Derry, N.H., which generates approximately 5 million containers of yogurt per year, has partnered with TerraCycle Company to collect containers to reuse as plant pots. TerraCycle is a New Jersey based company dedicated to the elimination of waste by reusing trash.

Alternatives to plastic plant containers also exist. Ball Horticultural Company, a large wholesale plant grower, packages plants in biodegradable and compostable Circle of Life™ pots made entirely of rice hulls. Similarly, Strawpots™ and Ellepots™ are made of natural materials and break down in the soil after planting. Quansett Nurseries also custom-grows plants in Ellepots for New England garden centers, landscapers, re-wholesale nurseries, and municipalities, upon request.

According to Dabney of Quansett, landscapers have responded especially well to Ellepots. To demonstrate the efficiency and cost-savings of Ellepots, Quansett recently conducted a race between landscapers using plastic, and others planting with Ellepots.

“Ellepots were not only environmentally sound, but cost-effective for landscapers,” says Dabney. “The team of landscapers using Ellepots only had to plant. The team using traditional pots had to remove each plant from its container, collect the containers after planting, and discard the plastic upon completion of the job.”

If alternatives to plant plastic are so desirable, then why haven’t all growers all made the switch? Ken Francoeur, owner of Stonepost Nursery of Raymond, N.H., explains the very fact that they biodegrade quickly makes them undesirablefor perennial growers like him. “Unless all of the plants in fiber pots are sold in one season, it’s impossible to over-winter them,” says Ken. “They break down and cannot be sold without repotting them the next year.”

Francoeur is considering using fiber pots next year for certain crops he knows he can sell in one season, such as annuals and mums. In the meantime, Stonepost, like Van Berkum, accepts for reuse containers purchased by landscapers from his nursery.

Like Francoeur, I am committed to exploring alternatives to plastic plant containers next year, and to frequenting garden centers and nurseries this year that accept returned plant containers. As I have learned through many years of gardening, it takes time, patience, and dedication to achieve a desired result. Although gardening’s dirty secret is an unfortunate problem, there are ways to help change the course of the future. Check out the sidebar for ideas on how to get involved.