What did you do in the garden today?

[saysfaa]

Why no plastic? ...https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CP7RXGR...UJI8DX&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it_im&th=1

I'm systematically minimizing the use of plastic as much as I reasonably can.

My siblings and I have been cleaning up our parents' farm/businesses for about ten years so far. Several 40'x100' or larger barns, stuffed full. And lots of stuff outside. They loved plastic.

I've spent unbelievable amount of hours picking plastic shards out of straw, sawdust, dirt, ect.

I know what happens to plastic when it goes - it shatters. The shards shatter. The shattered shards shatter. They don't decompose.

So, I believe the warnings about microplastics.

I'm less sure about the other warnings.

Finding alternatives also gives me something to think about - better than the state of the world these days.

And, yes, the glass vials can be frozen. You just need to cushion them and be careful of thermal shock (don't let them touch water until they warm up enough, and such). I could do that but I'll use something I already have. I haven't gotten to it yet.

 

[karenerwin]

We have our water pipe replaced !! So glad to have flushing toilets and running water !!
My chicken yard is a mud pit now.

@WthrLady I believe that they are required to bury the pipes 10’ deep but I was told that a lot of plumbers go deeper than that. Often 12ft deep

 

[gtaus]

I'm systematically minimizing the use of plastic as much as I reasonably can.

Plastic has so many advantages over other materials, but the pollution factor is not to be dismissed. Our oceans are filling up with plastics that will outlive us. That's too bad.

I try to repurpose lots of our plastic containers before they get sent to the recycle center. Just about all our plastic peanut butter jars work great out in the shop for nuts and bolts, or nails and screws. Love the plastic jars over glass jars in the shop because if they drop on the floor, the plastic might crack or break but it won't shatter like glass. We reuse lots of plastic containers to leftovers, especially when giving food to others to take home. No crying over that empty whipping cream bowl. Happy to give it to someone else after filling it up with some leftovers.

Almost all our plastics that I cannot repurpose are sent to the recycle center. But I have little confidence that any of our plastics are getting recycled. I suspect they get incinerated off site. If I am burning junk wood in a clean up fire out in the backyard, I'll toss in some broken plastics as well and not bother to send them to the recycle center. Plastics are made from oils and they usually burn quite well. Where I live, we can have controlled fires in those fire rings.

I have even purchased food products in some plastic containers because I wanted that plastic container after the food is gone. When I was a kid back in the 1960's and 1970's, my parents would buy our butter in plastic bowls that we used for our cereal and soup bowls when the butter was gone. They were actually nice cereal and soup bowls. And we saved the tops as well in case you wanted to fill it up with leftovers and place it in the fridge. I often wonder if plastic containers were made in such a way that they would have value after the product was used up, like those butter bowls, that we would have less plastic waste in the landfills.

I try to minimize the amount of plastics I use in my gardening. I bought a soil block maker to avoid using those small plastic pots for seed starts. My soil blocker did not work very well, so I ended up buying packs of plastic net cups with slits in them for seed starting. However, I bought the heavy-duty net cups which should last for many, many years of reuse if I take care of them. When we buy plants from the big box stores, I try to save as many of those starter packs and small pots as I can for reuse. But most of them these days are made from really thin plastics and are pretty much a one-time use, then trash it. Too bad they don't make them to be reused because I bet a lot of gardeners would save them and reuse them if they still had value. Well, I would anyways.

 

[Nym]

I was having a nice burn-off of cardboard and old tree trimmings / palm fronds until it started raining steadily. I also mowed the chook yard and threw out a few pot plants. Living things must come first, so I'm determined to rehome as many ornamentals as I can, especially the potted ones. They get too heavy and hard to repot.

 

[gtaus]

I believe that they are required to bury the pipes 10’ deep but I was told that a lot of plumbers go deeper than that. Often 12ft deep

I live in northern Minnesota where our water lines are buried just over 8 foot deep. I have never had a water line freeze in our winters. Are you sure your water pipes are buried 10 feet deep in Missouri? Looks more like about 3 feet deep in the picture of the trench being dug by the backhoe. But sometimes it is hard to judge the depth of the trench in a picture without some other reference.

 

[Nym]

Plastic has so many advantages over other materials, but the pollution factor is not to be dismissed. Our oceans are filling up with plastics that will outlive us. That's too bad.

I try to repurpose lots of our plastic containers before they get sent to the recycle center. Just about all our plastic peanut butter jars work great out in the shop for nuts and bolts, or nails and screws. Love the plastic jars over glass jars in the shop because if they drop on the floor, the plastic might crack or break but it won't shatter like glass. We reuse lots of plastic containers to leftovers, especially when giving food to others to take home. No crying over that empty whipping cream bowl. Happy to give it to someone else after filling it up with some leftovers.

Almost all our plastics that I cannot repurpose are sent to the recycle center. But I have little confidence that any of our plastics are getting recycled. I suspect they get incinerated off site. If I am burning junk wood in a clean up fire out in the backyard, I'll toss in some broken plastics as well and not bother to send them to the recycle center. Plastics are made from oils and they usually burn quite well. Where I live, we can have controlled fires in those fire rings.

I have even purchased food products in some plastic containers because I wanted that plastic container after the food is gone. When I was a kid back in the 1960's and 1970's, my parents would buy our butter in plastic bowls that we used for our cereal and soup bowls when the butter was gone. They were actually nice cereal and soup bowls. And we saved the tops as well in case you wanted to fill it up with leftovers and place it in the fridge. I often wonder if plastic containers were made in such a way that they would have value after the product was used up, like those butter bowls, that we would have less plastic waste in the landfills.

I try to minimize the amount of plastics I use in my gardening. I bought a soil block maker to avoid using those small plastic pots for seed starts. My soil blocker did not work very well, so I ended up buying packs of plastic net cups with slits in them for seed starting. However, I bought the heavy-duty net cups which should last for many, many years of reuse if I take care of them. When we buy plants from the big box stores, I try to save as many of those starter packs and small pots as I can for reuse. But most of them these days are made from really thin plastics and are pretty much a one-time use, then trash it. Too bad they don't make them to be reused because I bet a lot of gardeners would save them and reuse them if they still had value. Well, I would anyways.

Square Picket

Australia has a huge environmental issue when it comes to plastic waste with literally mountains of it going into landfill, being stockpiled or sent overseas to become someone else’s problem.

Recycling soft plastic waste into a usable & beneficial product has always been challenging, but EnduraPost is one of the great recycling success stories.

Made from 100% recycled plastic waste by Plastic Forests (an award-winning Australian innovator and manufacturer of recycled products), EnduraPost is an environmentally sustainable post, which responsibly addresses the plastic waste problem in Australia’s backyard.

Even when EnduraPost comes to the end of its long life, it too is 100% recyclable.

I was also a bit skeptical as to where all the recyclables were going. I think it would be a nice bit of goodwill if rate payers got a rate reduction for kerbside and depot recycling efforts. After all, they're getting our wa$te for nothing.

 

[gtaus]

I was having a nice burn-off of cardboard...

I used to burn lots of cardboard, then I sent cardboard to the recycle center, but for the past year I have been shredding up our cardboard and using the shreds in the chicken coop as deep bedding. When I clean out the coop, the paper and cardboard shreds get tossed into the chicken run to compost in place. The shreds compost pretty fast and then they get put into my raised garden beds as finished compost in 4-6 months.

I have a big manual scissors, but it was getting too hard for my old hands to cut heavy packing cardboard without getting cramps. So, I bought a power cutter which cuts the heavy cardboard without any effort.

Now I can cut up our heavy cardboard packing boxes we get from Amazon into 2-3 inch wide strips and feed them down my paper shredder at home. Makes gets shreds for coop bedding litter and later as finished compost for the gardens as I mentioned.

Just wanted to mention that option because I find shredding the cardboard to be more useful to me than when I used to burn it.

 

[gtaus]

Australia has a huge environmental issue when it comes to plastic waste with literally mountains of it going into landfill, being stockpiled or sent overseas to become someone else’s problem.

I think it is a problem all over the world.

Recycling soft plastic waste into a usable & beneficial product has always been challenging,.. I was also a bit skeptical as to where all the recyclables were going. I think it would be a nice bit of goodwill if rate payers got a rate reduction for kerbside and depot recycling efforts. After all, they're getting our wa$te for nothing.

I watched a program where they said it costs a company more money to recycle and reuse plastics then using new plastic material. If we cannot change that situation, there is little to no economic benefit for a company to reuse plastics in their products. I hope that changes. If used plastic had more value than new plastic, then I think we could start to reduce plastic waste in our environment.

 

[WthrLady]

Plastic has so many advantages over other materials, but the pollution factor is not to be dismissed. Our oceans are filling up with plastics that will outlive us. That's too bad.

I try to repurpose lots of our plastic containers before they get sent to the recycle center. Just about all our plastic peanut butter jars work great out in the shop for nuts and bolts, or nails and screws. Love the plastic jars over glass jars in the shop because if they drop on the floor, the plastic might crack or break but it won't shatter like glass. We reuse lots of plastic containers to leftovers, especially when giving food to others to take home. No crying over that empty whipping cream bowl. Happy to give it to someone else after filling it up with some leftovers.

Almost all our plastics that I cannot repurpose are sent to the recycle center. But I have little confidence that any of our plastics are getting recycled. I suspect they get incinerated off site. If I am burning junk wood in a clean up fire out in the backyard, I'll toss in some broken plastics as well and not bother to send them to the recycle center. Plastics are made from oils and they usually burn quite well. Where I live, we can have controlled fires in those fire rings.

I have even purchased food products in some plastic containers because I wanted that plastic container after the food is gone. When I was a kid back in the 1960's and 1970's, my parents would buy our butter in plastic bowls that we used for our cereal and soup bowls when the butter was gone. They were actually nice cereal and soup bowls. And we saved the tops as well in case you wanted to fill it up with leftovers and place it in the fridge. I often wonder if plastic containers were made in such a way that they would have value after the product was used up, like those butter bowls, that we would have less plastic waste in the landfills.

I try to minimize the amount of plastics I use in my gardening. I bought a soil block maker to avoid using those small plastic pots for seed starts. My soil blocker did not work very well, so I ended up buying packs of plastic net cups with slits in them for seed starting. However, I bought the heavy-duty net cups which should last for many, many years of reuse if I take care of them. When we buy plants from the big box stores, I try to save as many of those starter packs and small pots as I can for reuse. But most of them these days are made from really thin plastics and are pretty much a one-time use, then trash it. Too bad they don't make them to be reused because I bet a lot of gardeners would save them and reuse them if they still had value. Well, I would anyways.

Funny you say that. I was just thinking about the parkay margarine cereal bowl we used!! It was such a popular thing, that after a bit on the market, parkay actually started keeping their labeling to the lids and making the tub pretty so people WOULD use them for daily use and storing.

 

[gtaus]

Funny you say that. I was just thinking about the parkay margarine cereal bowl we used!! It was such a popular thing, that after a bit on the market, parkay actually started keeping their labeling to the lids and making the tub pretty so people WOULD use them for daily use and storing.

Unfortunately, I don't see things like that anymore. We used those parkay margarine bowls for many, many years. It would be great if companies designed their plastic containers to have a life beyond the use of storing the original product. It might help reduce plastic waste.