Plastic is one of the most widely used materials. As it's cheap and versatile, it's used for various things, like food packaging, construction, and medical instruments. However, plastic waste, when mismanaged, becomes a pollutant that harms the environment.
One way to help reduce plastic waste is to find ways to recycle the material to prevent it from ending up in the ocean or a landfill.
One TikToker showed a way to recycle plastic medicine bottles for a gardening hack.
@salemsousley how I'm recycling my pill bottles this year 😅 Seed saving my spinach from this year #seedsaving #greenwitch #gardentok ♬ Waltz Of The Witch - Atomica Music
The scoop
TikTok user Salem Sousley (@salemsousley) shared a simple but clever hack for recycling empty medicine bottles: repurposing them into seed containers.
"How I'm recycling my pill bottles this year," Salem wrote in the video description. They show how they pick the spinach seeds from the stems by hand and store them in a green plastic pill bottle.
Seeds are best stored in cool, dark, and dry places. Medicine bottles are designed to be airtight to keep prescription pills dry, so they can be useful as makeshift seed storage containers and organizers.
How it's helping
Seed storage can be expensive. A set of airtight seed containers can cost anywhere from $10 to $30, depending on the brand. Instead of buying new containers, repurpose old pill bottles into seed containers. This will enable you to keep seeds dry without having to spend more money.
The world produces around 350 million tonnes of plastic waste every year as of 2022, and 1 to 2 million tonnes of it enters the ocean per year. Plastic can take between 20 and 500 years to decompose and doesn't completely disappear.
Pill bottles are usually made from polypropylene, also known as #5 plastic, which isn't generally accepted by curbside collection programs. According to a report by Statista, Americans are estimated to fill around 4.98 billion prescription medications this year. This pill-bottle gardening hack offers a simple way to reduce plastic waste by repurposing old prescription bottles instead of throwing them away.
Plastics aren't the only materials you can recycle or repurpose to reduce pollution. If you have any old clothes you don't wear anymore, you can work with a startup like Trashie to recycle them. With Trashie's recycling program, you can donate your old clothes to be recycled and get perks and rewards in exchange.
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Which of these factors would most effectively motivate you to recycle old clothes and electronics?
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Giving me money back 💰 Many household items, from electronics to plastic containers, can be recycled or repurposed in unexpected ways. Learning what's recyclable and where to take items for proper disposal can help keep more waste out of landfills.
What everyone's saying
Users note that they like this gardening hack, and one even shared that they did the same with their pill bottles and mentioned another trick they use to store seeds.
"I did this for a while until I ran out of storage space," one user wrote, "then moved to like tictac containers."
"That's so smart!" another user commented. "Why on earth have I never thought to use them for my seeds!?"
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