The Creative Ways You Should Repurpose Ben & Jerry's Containers

Even in the dead of winter, there's nothing quite like sitting down with a pint of ice cream to watch a movie or send off a recent break-up. There are few better choices for this kind of evening than Ben & Jerry's, which started in Vermont in 1978. In the decades since, the company has dominated a breadth of the "premium" ice cream market thanks to its retail franchises and a unique variety of flavors available all over the world. However, once finished with your ice cream, you're left with the question of what to do with that cardboard container. Conventional knowledge would say recycle it and move on, but avid DIYers could get a lot of mileage out of using the leftover materials to create projects like plant pots or bird feeders. Ben & Jerry's encourages this kind of creativity, too.

There are, frankly, innumerable clever ways for you to repurpose an empty ice cream tub, be they stylish organizers for pieces of a sewing kit (or other craft goods), a child's first piggy bank featuring the Ben & Jerry's bovine mascot, or even the body of something like a makeshift robot toy. Upcycling these ice cream containers into something with long-term usage for you or your local environment is the ideal way to get the best proverbial bang out of your buck, and sticking to ideas like plant pots or bird feeders will do so without having to buy much more than required filler materials like soil or birdseed.

Indoor gardening is a great hobby for any homebody to pick up. Indoor gardens can improve air quality, absorb sounds to make for quieter spaces, and regulate humidity so you can rely less on your HVAC systems. Growing a calming houseplant that helps your space feel fresh can also be a mental health game-changer, particularly for those who work from home. Plus, there are plenty of low-maintenance options like succulents that anyone could find their green thumb for. With just a few adjustments, a Ben & Jerry's ice cream container makes for a perfect pot that doesn't have the same potential to scratch up your countertops as traditional terracotta.

A lot of plants will require 6 to 8 inches of space for their roots. If you need more, you can always buy larger gallon-sized ice cream tubs to perform the same DIY craft. Make sure to clean out the Ben & Jerry's container first, so you aren't cross-contaminating your plants with potentially unsafe residue. Then, cut a drainage hole in the bottom. Since typical ice cream containers are made from cardboard, it should be easy enough to approach this step with any variety of knives or scissors. It may also be worth cutting a couple of flaps out from the risen foot of the container so that the drained water doesn't get stuck underneath. You can even reuse the original Ben & Jerry's lid as a plate to catch water underneath the container, though it might be better to utilize a stoneware plate that can channel water while being less likely to warp or disintegrate over time.

The same design philosophy used to create a plant pot can be used to turn Ben & Jerry's tubs into a DIY bird feeder. Rather than cutting a drainage hole in the bottom of your container, instead cut a few holes into the sides near the base. Then, you can glue the foot of the container to the original lid, offering a place for the seed to spill into so birds can land and eat. Alternatively, you can cut the entire container down to about one-inch deep and manually fill the basin with seed whenever it runs low.

You can leave your DIY feeder on a table or porch railing outside, but it would also be easy enough to punch a few holes near the top of the ice cream container so that you can tie string around as you would a pinecone feeder. This should make it easier to hang your feeder off a tree branch. Just make sure to hang any birdfeeders away from others to reduce the risk of diseases spreading from an overcrowding of birds. In fact, this same string-hanging method can be used for Ben & Jerry's container plant pots if you want some DIY hanging planters to liven up your home. Regardless of how you choose to use them, recycling ice cream containers is a great home project to foster your creativity.