Chatham garden center opens plastic pot recycling to public

Got unneeded plastic flower pots? A Chatham garden center wants to help you keep them out of the landfill.

Glasshouse Nursery and Garden Center at 56 Creek Rd. is inviting residents to bring in plastic pots, marked with recycling numbers 5, 6 or 7, as part of its plastic pot return program until Sept. 15.

Spencer Robbins, Glasshouse’s general operations manager at Glasshouse, said the program has been a few years in the making.

“When I started here, I just noticed how we can’t get rid of the (plastic) pots; they’re not accepted for recycling in town,” he said.

That left the garden centre, and its landscaping operation, throwing out thousands of pots. Even more were disposed of by potted plant buyers.

Then Robbins found a Windsor depot that recycles plastic flower pots. Glasshouse already has sent three or four truckloads of pots to them.

“We’d like to expand that and offer it to our customers,” Robbins said. “We’re also receiving pots that may not have come from our garden centre.”

Since the pots are ground up into pellets for reuse, residents are asked to clean dirt out of any pots they bring in, he said.

Anyone bringing in pots to recycle will get a coupon for 10 per cent off store purchases.

The depot will send Glasshouse a year-end report on how much plastic the recycling effort brings in.

“I’m looking forward to that,” Robbins said. “It’s nice see (the pots) moving to Windsor and being reused, whereas that would have just been in the trash.”

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