Black plastic plant pots hard to recycle :(

we were notified a few years ago. on the plus side, hopefully that means that the rest are actually being recycled.

 

Got notice about it a few years ago too. Figured it was because of the dirt, which the article also states is an issue. Home Depot here had a sign saying they'll take them. Perhaps they ship them back with the trays to the nursery to be reused.

 

Yep, I just rinse them out and stack then in the corner of my yard. Whenever I head in the direction of the local nursery, I drop them off there.
Next time I'm at home depot, I'll ask them if they'll take them. I'm there more often than heading towards the nursery. They're kinda out in the boondocks.

 

If we're going to all the bother and expense of maintaining a road network and truck operators and electrification of transport, it makes sense (to me) to adopt major re-use strategies. Lots of containers used in retail.

I'd love to see the beverage industry go back to returnables, for example.

Outdoor landscaping could do the same with those black plastics- make them heavier, make them re-usable, then re-use them.

 

we've tried for decades here to pass packaging laws. there is very little political will for some reason.
the bills come and go, with little success. i hate the packaging that comes home from the supermarket. everything is in a plastic bag or box, it's ridiculous.
i would imagine the colored pots have dirt as well, but haven't seen any notification about it.
i think the sign says to rinse everything clean.

 

PET PEEVE:

Rinsing/cleaning recyclables.

Isn't water on short supply.

In my area, only 30 percent of items offered for recycling is recycled. The rest is dumped because of trash mixed with or because of filth -- lots of wasted water.

Yes, "wishcycling" may make the consumer feel better, but in practice most of the stuff offered up for recycling eventually ends up trashed.

Guess I should say I was for a time unwittingly named office recycling coordinator. The trash mixed in was crazy. Worst was takeout coffee cups and the cardboard frozen food boxes -- neither recycable and when they show up on the belt at the sorting facility, the whole section is dumped....trash AND recycables

 

I like the idea of reusing, but it might be hard to convince the masses to pay more for the heavier containers, and for the collecting and shipping back to the plant.

Landscaping and horticulture has other options. The article mentions fiber pots, and there are biodegradeable plastics. The plant can just be left in the pot for planting. Or just toss the pot in the compost pile if you have concerns over root binding.

Just rinsing doesn't take much water, and I'll actually reuse a plastic juice bottle once for water before recycling. If it takes more effort than a rinse, say a peanut butter jar, I just trash it.

Recycling plastic isn't like glass or metal. Reheating plastic can change it. At least at one time, recycled plastic wasn't allowed for food containers. We might be better off putting used plastic through pyrolysis or thermal conversion to break them back down into the original building blocks from the fossil fuels. Then it doesn't matter if the plastic is dirty or in an unrecyclable form, and other organic trash can go into the reactors.

A story I once read pointed out that the stryofoam cups and containers fast food places stopped using were recyclable, and the paper products they switched too were not. Though the switch may have been more about the plastic not being biogradeable compared to paper.

 

The foam to paper switch for fast food happened with the Arch Deluxe. Plastic recycling wasn't common back then. Then a fast food place isn't going to rinse recyclables, so it was likely more a question of what was better to put into a land fill. Paper cups take up less space.

Volume is the problem with foamed plastic. Styrofoam simply costs too much to ship around to bother recycling because of the cargo space it takes up. Specialized compactors are needed to get most of the air out of it. Great that those are becoming more common.

Someone making their own biodiesel might be able add some styrofoam into the fuel.

 

Our facility went through the phase too. Overnight recycle cans appeared throughout our facility. We got a bunch of press about it. Then one day, ALL those bins disappeared as fast as they appeared.
I brought in an aluminum can recycle bin; between my cubical and the department break room, that I established over a decade ago. I would cash them in every quarter and bring in cakes and snacks from whatever proceeds I got from the cans. Well EVS removed that bin along with the other "facility owned" bins. Boy, they got an "ear full"; when the department realized that there would be no more quarterly snacks, until it was returned!!

PS: It was funny when the plumbers asked if they could drop-off their brass recyclables - I told them, 'I literally don't need the back ache'.

 

I don't know how it works in CA... but for most part in the US, the economics of recycling are broken. It is cheaper to produce new plastic than recycle. There is not enough recycling industries that will take "recyclables". Yet, we all are consuming more, packaging more, shipping more. It is not sustainable. My town use to have a recycling program where residents would take their "recyclables" to a transfer station and manually sort into different bins. No longer. Because the town (and tax payers of the town) can't afford it any more. It cost more to recycle than to have it dumped in a land-fill.

 

Our state has about a nickle surcharge on most beverage containers. Ca actually had to pass a resolution to ONLY redeem for Ca containers, since adjacent states would truck in u-haul containers full of their containers to redeem in Ca. The system isn't without flaws but it allows for research and development of ways to reduce cost and increase usage of recycled materials. That's what makes it worth while to turn in those cans 4 snacks. There's 3-4 scrap metal yards on my way home, so as long as I'm not taking a detour - there will be sweet treats....

FWIW: I believe ALL plastic grocery bags will be outlawed in the state by 2026. Paper bags only....

 

it's like gasoline. if the new packaging were taxed, things would change

 

our dump cum recycling center takes yard waste, plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, wood, metal both large and small. and garbage for a pig farmer.
where it goes, who knows? but the town does claim that it is cheaper than rubbish

 

Plastics recycling is not generally a success story:

At Least 85 Percent of U.S. Plastic Waste Went to Landfills in 2021 | Smithsonian.

Plastics: Material-Specific Data | US EPA

Some polymers (mainly PET, HDPE and LDPE) are quite amenable to recycling. If they are clean and not mixed with other polymers.

Pretty much all polymers can be decomposed by a variety of bacteria and fungi (more than you might guess), but again need to be clean and not mixed with others. Tricky is to cause the microbes to generate new monomers, instead of just CO2. If just going to CO2, might as well burn with energy recovery. Although there are some polymers you ought not burn. PVC has a remarkably high % of chlorine, BTW.

==
Pots calling pots black - I thought these were of PE, but internet says they are mixed anything plastics.

 

Here in the US - landfills are a good place for them!

Otherwise they might wind up in the ocean!
Just like the jillions of plastic water bottles that some foolish nation exported to a not-foolish nation that kept the recycling cash and dumped the bottles into the sea!

A co-worker has a side-hustle as a hippie-dippy, pollinator-friendly local plant nursery.
THEY buy recyclable or old-school clay pots to put their pants into until they go to their 'forever (not!) home.'
I sometimes re-use the black plastic pots to start seeds, but mostly I put them in general trash.
In 2024 this seems to be the most eco-friendly method, all things considered.

Caveat:
I DO have access to a telephone central office that resides on a US Federal Installation that has a hideously expensive (and probably equally inefficient!) recycling facility.
Since wireline telephony is a buggy-whip industry, I find myself trying to dispose of a huge (yuge!) quantity of material, including plastics.
AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGEMENT I will deposit some of these materials in the bright blue dumpsters that litter the landscape on that facility.
I balance the fact that my metals are ACTUALLY recycled at a significant energy and cost advantage, against the fear that my government might still be 'hiring people' to deal with plastics.

My personal plastic bottles?
I put them in our local landfill, since I am something of an old-school environmentalist.

I know how energy budgets and landfills (and money!!!) work.