Exciting news regarding POSIpot's

What is POSIpot?

When a customer buys a plant from us, it is grown in a good quality plastic pot, the pot size and shape corresponds with our POSIpots; this is a recycled and compostable card sleeve that we swap or decant the plant into at ‘point of sale’. The customer takes the plant home in a POSIpot and plants the whole thing in the ground.

We take the used plastic pot, wash it and use it again and the loop is closed. It makes no sense to us that a plastic pot is produced to carry a plant home; POSIpots last for about 2 weeks before they break down and best of all the gardener doesn’t have to eventually bin a plastic pot. When pots (regardless of colour) are put into the domestic ‘recycling’ it actually means that it is incinerated or has been known to be put to landfill abroad… it’s also a waste for it to be produced in the first place.

In June 2022 we attended Gardeners World live. This is the first garden show to offer plant buyers the option to take their plants home plastic free. For us it was a complete unknown! Along with POSIpots, we took samples of some of the other single use-free processes we have in place at edibleculture, such as our compost bag for life scheme. On the opening morning with a degree of trepidation we waited to see if anyone would use us and what reaction we would get.

It didn’t take long for people to catch on... ‘what a brilliant idea’, ‘why don’t all garden centres do this? ’Such positive responses and as shown here, the plastic pots started to build up in the bins to the side of our POSIpotting bench.

With the exception of a few very large pots all the POSIpots fitted perfectly, we had a worry that the process could be slow, but it wasn’t the case. By Saturday we had a big increase in pot swappers due to a shout on Gardeners World by Monty, but we were finding it easier and easier.

It was a very successful few days and best of all some of the 60 plant sellers onsite got to see the process and understand that it is not difficult. Some even came and took their pots back for re-use. For us to show and explain in person the behaviour change needed to growers was invaluable.

We swapped over 2000 plastic pots, over 500 plastic bags and a huge number of labels. The plastics will be sorted into different plastic types and made into new pots.

Our long-term aim is work with other garden shows and promote the idea that single use plastic doesn’t have to be used in home horticulture. Gardeners World had the vision to try, we are full of hope other shows will as well.