By now you’ve probably planted all your annuals and added more perennials to your garden. What to do with all those plastic pots you brought home? In researching this topic, I had hoped to find a conclusive answer, but the recycling industry is much more complex than I thought. I used to think I could throw them in with my regular recycling routine but I found out that many recyclers don’t want these pots.
Since most flower pots are dark green or black and are made from a variety of plastic resins, they say to put them in the trash. The reason it is hard to recycle dark colored plastic is because recycling facilities sort plastics by bouncing a beam of light off them. Since black plastic absorbs light, it can't be sorted and goes straight through the system and off to the landfill or incineration. The same is true for really dark colors in general (dark grays and sometimes navy.) It's best to either reuse them or see if any nearby nurseries or home improvement stores will take them back for reuse.
I found that Lowe’s has a recycling program for these pots,
although I can’t say exactly what they do with them. They usually have a shelf inside
the garden center where you can drop yours off.
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| Lowes pot recycling shelf in garden center |
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| Lowes plant pot recycling |
Home Depot advertises that they do plant pot recycling and use this picture on their website:
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| Home Depot plant container recycling program |
If you do not have a Lowe’s or Home Depot nearby, ask your
local garden center whether they will take back trays and pots.
Some good news I found: companies are making pots out of recyclable resins now. For example Terracast uses Linear Low Density Polyethylene to create new pots from recycled ones. Let's hope this trend continues!
https://www.terracastproducts.com/planters-from-recycled-materials-all-about-recycled-plant-pots/