Upcycle

Something different.

On another of my blogs, where I post a lot of gardening items, I discussed this problem of upcycling plastic to keep it out of landfills. Here’s a link to the Coca-Cola company’s plan for recycling, with their earliest goals set for 2030. It’s great that producers of plastic containers are on board with getting them out of the environment, but when we view our own faithful drops in the recycle bins, we have to doubt whether all this plastic is going anywhere helpful. Taking plastic we carry home from the store and finding a use for it sounds a worthy pursuit, but—as I noted elsewhere—most plastic comes to us in the form of a container. The best use we can make of plastic, then, is pretty much repurposed containers. For food storage, this is easy. For other needs, we have to create a little. Decorative crafts haven’t got much chance of moving tons of plastic, since of jewelry and knickknacks, we need only so much. I’ve been fooling around with craft paints, just to demonstrate that throwaway nursery pots our garden plants come in, even printed ones, can at least be upcycled for windowsill gardens, houseplants, outdoors if your paint is rated weatherproof…

Two nursery pots, above, the first with natural ivy leaves glued on with the paint itself. Then a metal finish, and a yogurt cup in a weathered terra cotta. A row of these would be fine for indoor succulents.

This is a Bundt-shaped dome from a store bought cake. Hens and chicks might go in a pot this shape.

A little southwestern touch, with a tomato package. If you paint clear plastic on the inside, you get a ceramic-like gloss showing on the outside.