Going full circle

Imagine 140,000 pounds of plastic. That’s the record-breaking amount the Missouri Botanical Garden collected last year. The garden provides an excellent recycling program to area growers by accepting plastic cell packs, trays, hanging baskets and pots of all sizes at its location in St. Louis and its additional 14 collection sites in the area.

New Jersey has also gotten active in the recycling game. The state’s Department of Agriculture offers greenhouse and nursery growers a film recycling program at two regional collection sites, and last year it saw a 53 percent increase in materials recycled, making 2011 its most successful year.

It’s clear that when it comes to recycling, greenhouse growers are interested. Maybe it’s to help the environment or maybe it’s just to save some money in landfill tipping fees. Whatever the motive, the horticulture industry is making improvements and overcoming challenges.

Reap the benefits
East Jordan Plastics Inc. (EJP) is a horticultural container company based out of Michigan that fully partakes in the recycling process. The company offers to pick up used containers when delivering products and bring them back to its South Haven, Mich., facility for processing. EJP has collected containers from all across North America, and growers don’t have to be customers of EJP to participate in the pick-up program. Also, the company will pay for the plastic it collects.

Nathan Diller, recycling manager of EJP, says that the company pays for the plastic because it has value.

But he believes that growers are interested in recycling for reasons other than money.

“The monetary incentive is important to help cover their labor cost and consolidate the material,” he says. “But more importantly, I think they’re doing it just to divert that stuff from the landfill.”

After EJP collects the plastic, it is processed into regrind and made into new containers, thus creating a closed loop. So growers who recycle their plastic with EJP will actually be able to see the results.

Missouri Botanical Garden is also on a closed-loop cycle. Most of its plastic is turned back into containers, and the big containers that have polypropylene and polyethylene are being processed into lumber for landscaping purposes.

“It makes people feel very good when they know that what they just brought us, either from their garage or their place of business, gets recycled into a product that they can see and envision using,” says Steve Cline, manager of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William T. Kemper Center for Home Gardening.

Cline says he would like to see the program develop to the point where they can also offer growers a monetary incentive. The garden is making some income off of the lumber it’s producing, and if it becomes profitable, Cline would like to move it to the private sector. If that were to happen, the program could offer a payment for the amount of plastic someone brings in.

It’s not just making money off of recycling that can help with finances. Paul VanOteghem, vice president of production at Home Nursery Inc. in Albers, Ill., knows how expensive it can be to throw away plastic, particularly film.

“Hauling [film] to the landfill is quite expensive,” he says. “This year I had to pay to have it hauled to a recycling center. But it was still cheaper than paying tipping fees at the landfill.”

Face challenges
Recycling film seems to be the big issue on the forefront for recycling in this industry.

“My understanding is the type of plastic [the film] has is not real desirable,” VanOteghem says. “And the fact that it’s coming from a nursery, it’s fairly dirty. They don’t like it. Those things coupled together make it a challenge.”

While VanOteghem is able to recycle pots and containers at the Missouri Botanical Garden, he’s had trouble finding a firm to take the used film. The firm that accepted his film last year closed, leaving him to search for other options.

With film, it’s a challenge to clean it and reuse it. Cline says that when the recycling program at Missouri Botanical Garden first opened in 1998, they faced the same problem with the horticulture containers.

“I would say the majority of my time over the last 14 years was spent trying to figure out what to do with it,” he says. “Because the industry was not well-developed at that point, especially the type of plastic that’s in the horticultural containers.”

Fortunately the garden has a machine now that is able to clean the plastic as it’s being processed. Recycling film, however, is still a work in progress.

Take action
Perhaps this all sounds well and good, but you don’t live in these areas. That’s OK. Greenhouses that do not have access to programs like New Jersey’s film recycling or Missouri Botanical Garden’s plastic pot collection have the opportunity to step up and find ways to bring a similar program to the area.

VanOteghem recommends reaching out to your associations for help. He says the Illinois Green Industry Association was working on a recycling program, but unfortunately the plans fell through. If an association can’t help, then try reaching out to your state’s Department of Agriculture, and ask that they implement a recycling program like the one in New Jersey. You can even reach out to your local competition. Talk with other growers in the area about forming a recycling program together, or coming up with a way to send it to a program. In fact, EJP recommends that multiple growers consolidate their plastic at a central location for pick-up.

If there’s a will, there’s a way, and when it comes to recycling, the benefits often outweigh the cost.

Other resources:
Learn more about the following recycling programs:

Missouri Botanical Garden,
www.missouribotanicalgarden.org or www.potstoplanks.org

New Jersey Department of Agriculture,
www.nj.gov/agriculture/divisions/md/prog/filmsites.html

East Jordan Plastics Inc.,
eastjordanplastics.com/plastic-recycling.html

Photos courtesy of East Jorden Plastics