Discontinued. Details: Plastic Pot Recycling

Written by Jean Ponzi, Chapter Member and Green Resources Manager for EarthWays Center, a division of Missouri Botanical Garden

Last spring – with regret, after key parties exhausted all avenues to problem-solve – the program of coordinated plastic pot recycling ended for our region. I reported this for, the Missouri Botanical Garden website blog, and blog, Discover + Share. Here are updates and details for Wild Ones.

Big, dedicated efforts went into St. Louis plastic pot recycling, from home gardeners to the locally owned garden centers that hosted pot collection trailers to the sustainability pros and grant-makers who adapted and persisted, learning through program evolutions, over nearly 30 years. But even the best collections can’t solely make recycling work.

What’s the problem? The kinds of plastic used to manufacture garden containers have a negative value in the recycling industry. That’s just one reason why these resins weren’t welcome in conventional recycling bins in the first place. The local commercial recycling company that took over plastic pot recycling from the Garden in 2017 tried all market options, drawing on expertise of their 60+ years in the business. No end-user demand for material? Collection must cease. Add to the mix the tide of cheap virgin plastic flooding material markets, thanks to the fiscal forces of fossil fuel. Voter-gardeners, take note.

Recycling must pull its weight as an economic system, in a market-driven, commodities-based global environment. It can – and did – work with our pots – full-circle, locally – for a while. A few partner enterprises here used the garden plastic scrap to make saleable goods. But these Maker Innovations never grew into the scale needed to economically support the demands of collecting, sorting, processing, and transporting tons ‘o pots.

So what to do with your pots? Please always dispose of garden plastic containers – pots, trays, cell-packs – in your LANDFILL TRASH. These kinds of items will be a contaminant in your household or single stream recycling bins, endangering the viability of that collection system! If an item is not on the list of accepted materials for your community’s recycling program, it should NOT go into your recycling bin. Visit www.RecycleResponsibly.org for more details.

Can Wild Ones foster pot reuse? Maybe, limited. Concern for controlling jumping worm invasions now has us sharing bare-root plants at meetings vs. tucking them into reused pots. Some of our native plant growers will welcome their pots back; be sure to check with your grower when buying. Flats and trays may be more exchangeable. The overwhelming supply of scrap pots works against relying on apps like NextDoor, Craigslist, and Facebook groups. If you know a source that wants them, you are fortunate. We could auction that kind of contact at a Wild Ones event! Please make sure a presumed recipient can use the kinds of pots you have, before delivering them, and dump out soil to prevent moving any pests.

What’s this about Home Depot and pots? A recent eNews item from a local garden center announced that Home Depot stores recycle pots. Wow! Problem solved, right? Sorry. It’s true that Home Depot participates in a program circulating pots. You will probably find a plant rack (one, not a row of them, or a collection trailer) with a small pot recycling sign outside the garden center at your favorite HD store. This small consumer service is the one public-facing part of a national business-to-business enterprise.

When the wholesale growers who sell to this big box chain retrieve their racks of unsold potted plants from the stores, they take the rack of pots too. All these pots go from the growers to a pot manufacturer who has a highly proprietary formula to mix recycled-pot resins into new pots they sell to the wholesale growers, who sell to Home Depot and other buyers. Weed, wait, repeat.

In 2020-21, while our local pot recycling program was pandemic-paused, I did a lot of digging for info and options, including connecting with Home Depot’s corporate sustainability staff. I learned about their program. I explained our situation, our program history. Could they pick up recycling of our St. Louis pots? Emphatically, no. Their system is good for the national businesses it serves, and for providing a modest customer amenity. Way different scale and substance from the St. Louis program.

I also talked to managers at a couple of Home Depot stores. I learned that responsibility is mainly in the hands of grower representatives for handling the racks of unsold plants and any racks of scrap pots. This means that store staff may or may not be trained to deal with a pile of pots, if that rack starts overflowing.

This is a reasonable system to me, in the mix of operations of a big box store. Home Depot is a partner in a B-to-B specialized material movement system that includes recycling. They are not in the business of public recycling. Similar for their recycling bins for rechargeable batteries, CFL bulbs and plastic bags. End-users take primary responsibility for these materials, not the retail chains that participate as collection points.

Our regional program let individual gardeners bring pots in their small batches to a few collection points. Garden-center partners transported trailers full of them to a central site for sorting and grinding. Dozens of local Green Industry companies brought their truckloads. In the highest-function times, local end-users then made stuff from the plastic grind, for sale with varying success. Summary? Some smart elements, very labor- and transportation-intensive, in a system prototype that may someday be revived and refined to succeed at scale. If I’m still around for that kind of opportunity, I may very well chime in. Meanwhile, Home Depot respectfully declines to have their stores take up the slack between our two systems.

What about plastic pot alternatives?

This seems like a logical question, but it runs up against a tough situation. Plastic has become a reliable low-cost way to get live plants from growers to gardeners in top condition, through intensive handling and shipping systems. The switch to plastic pots literally delivered our societal fanatic love of home gardening.

It’s akin to what we’ve experienced with sanitized individual portions, carry-out and fast food, online shopping, and all manner of crazed convenience. We need to think about the total costs of using a material that’s so “cheap” to make and use that its worth in recycling has dropped to a negative value. This is a key consideration for dealing with plastic pollution overall.

Plant production systems that don’t rely on plastic pots are working, though still on a limited scale. One of our region’s largest growers and plant wholesalers, Jost Greenhouses, has been using the Ellepot equipment and materials system, developed in Denmark, for several years. The Ellepot system delivers plants in compostable wraps and reusable trays. Jost reports their landscaping company customers experience a 30-40% efficiency in labor costs as they install these “potless” plants. That’s a big plus from a specialized grower like Jost, who’ll be saving on pot and tray costs once equipment investment is recouped.

On the Garden’s Horticulture team, Greenhouse Manager Derek Lyle continually works to cut plastic pot waste. His team evaluated container needs to streamline the types and durability of pots used, which facilitates re-use of pots in our expanding growing programs. These shifts have cut supply costs, as the cost of plastic products mushroomed. Derek gladly shares his process with other public gardens, including in this 2022 webinar.

What else can we do?

Educate ourselves about plastic production and waste issues. View Story of Plastic, a documentary directed and produced by Deia Schlosburg, an alumna of Washington University. Read this terrifically thorough paper by Marie Chieppo, a New England garden designer with a background in research and writing for academic journals.

Dig into a plastic-issue campaign, like this one with St. Louis as a focus for the UN Environment Program, National Geographic, and the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative. Local Green champion Jenny Wendt, who U City Wild Ones will remember as staff liaison to the city’s Sustainability Commission, continues national leadership work in this effort! Even simpler, turn out for Operation Clean Stream, River Des Peres Trash Bash, or a Missouri River Relief event.

Choose a restaurant certified by the Green Dining Alliance, a program of our powerhouse non-profit EarthDay-365. Eliminating Styrofoam and maintaining in-house recycling are prerequisites for this badge of distinction. Many GDA-certified places practice food waste composting as well as recycling. Several are helping pilot use of KindBox, a take-back takeout packaging innovation. The Garden’s Sassafras Café is super-proud to be recertified at the 5-Star level in our new Taylor Visitor Center space, and one of my historic faves, O’Connell’s Pub, just jumped into GDA at the 3-Star level. Oh, and the food will be good!

I’m sharing all this to show how diverse efforts ARE being made.

Be gentle with yourself as you deal with plastic problems. This is bum news. Our region had a Plastic Pot Recycling option since 1995. Although the program persisted and evolved here, the fact that it has never been replicated elsewhere in the U.S. alludes to the issues associated with this special waste stream, and with plastic waste overall.

It’s reducing plastic use and waste that’s most important. Recycling alone can’t keep up, and it’s a fact that plastic retrieved and sent to landfill will not make it into Earth’s oceans.

Personal actions absolutely matter, but they are one element in a complex net of issues. May our native plant relations give us the moxie to pipe up when we can call to account the fossil fuel tyrants and their plastic spawn – and the sense to avoid the trap of believing we are personally just not doing enough.

Appreciate the impacts of your native garden! Wild Ones ecological knowledge and choices are a real, powerful force, healing in another field of concern.

Thanks for reading this. Thanks for growing so much Green.

Jean Ponzi

Missouri Botanical Garden’s Green Resource Info Service is at your service when you have questions about any aspect of sustainable living. Email our EarthWays Center at greenresources@mobot.org or call 314-577-0246.