The Easiest Way To Recycle Your Plastic Nursery Pots

Gardening is a creative and engaging experience, and its rewards are plentiful when you look around at your beautiful yard — whether you plant gorgeous yellow-flowering climbing plants for pollinators or delicious perennial veggies. But one of the less considered side effects of gardening is all of the waste that can build up when you buy your plants from a gardening center. Many commercial plants come in those flimsy black plastic pots, which safely store the plant roots while at the store but ultimately just get chucked in the garbage once you're done. The Home Depot, however, wants to reduce that waste, so it offers a drop-off recycling effort for those containers.

If not recycled, those black plastic pots end up in landfills in the long run. The Home Depot says it recognizes that its "biggest environmental impact is the products we sell" and that this "includes the containers we sell, like those in our garden center." So it started this recycling initiative in 2009 in partnership with East Jordan Plastics. That company collects old plastic pots and turns them into 100% recyclable plant containers for garden centers, greenhouses, and plant nurseries.

What's truly great is that, with a little effort from its customers, these recycled containers recover upwards of 60% of the energy initially tied to product processing. And it keeps more garbage from unnecessarily ending up in a landfill. To date, over 16 million pounds of used containers have been recovered by the East Jordan Plastics company.

Tossing those cheap plastic containers in the trash after you plant your new greenery is often the easy option. That way, you don't have to deal with the flimsy, dirty containers when you're done with them, and they aren't left to clutter your garage or gardening shed. But it's not the eco-friendly option. There are also creative ways to reuse plastic nursery pots in your garden to help. But recycling at The Home Depot is an alternative if you're not in an upcycling mood.

Next time you're buying pansies, roses, or any other varieties of blooms for your many stunning flower garden ideas from The Home Depot, hit pause before you toss their black plastic pots into the garbage. Set them aside in a pile, and once you're done, recycle them at any Home Depot location.

All you need to do is look for the black recycle sign out front of the store's garden center. It says "Recycle" up top and features a green logo of a plant seedling in a pot with the white recycle logo on top of it. Then, simply place the pots you want to recycle on the nearby rack, and the store staff will handle the rest of the process from there. The Home Depot accepts any plastic garden container in its garden centers, not just ones you purchased at the store. It's a small effort on your part, but it makes gardening greener and helps The Home Depot stay more eco-friendly as it continues to provide you with all the gardening options you use for your yard. Plus, it gives you another excuse to wander through the garden center and find your next garden addition.