LINCOLN SQUARE — I don't know about you, but between my vegetable plot and flower beds, I'm feeling pretty environmentally friendly — eating as hyper-local as it gets and providing habitat for those all-important pollinators.
Alas, a green thumb doesn't make you "green."
In most cases, your plants' plastic packaging — be it a pot or cell pack — isn't recyclable.
Flip the containers over. Do you see a recycling symbol?
If no, not recyclable. If yes and the number inside the triangle is a 6, also not recyclable.
The City of Chicago's blue cart program doesn't accept unnumbered or #6 plastic, otherwise known as polystyrene. Your cell packs are likely made from this material.
Even cities like Ann Arbor, which do accept the plastic pots, won't take the cell packs.
What to do?
- Check with your garden center to see if they have a return program in place for the packaging.
- Reuse, perhaps to grow seedlings or as storage containers for things like buttons and paperclips.
- Be on the lookout for recycling events, like one recently held at the Chicago Botanic Garden, in which plant pots and cell packs were collected.
Or, if you're headed to St. Louis, drop off your containers at the Missouri Botanical Garden, which has a plastic pot recycling program that's steered one million pounds of the stuff away from landfills.
They grind the plastic into chips and sell them to manufacturers of things like plastic lumber.
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