RHINELANDER - We recycle paper and pop cans but did you know that you can recycle your plastic pots?

Take one of these flats and multiple it by tens of thousands. That number alone is the amount Hanson's Garden Village may go through in a years production.

Hanson's Garden Village co-onwer, Brent Hanson says, "Putting plants in can be one of the best things you can do for the environment."


However, Brent says the negative is the left-over containers.

Hanson says, "Here's the problem. Where that goes with current garbage handling is about 90 percent of the time into the landfills."

He says that gets to be expensive and bad for the environment. So his business and the Oneida County Solid Waste Department is collecting plastic pots to reduce our reliance on landfills.

Hanson says, "I think there's renewed interest in it and also with the price of oil going up the value of these used plastics to recyclers has increased."

So here's what you can recycle: pots, flats, and empty hanging baskets. They'll accept plastics with the recycling numbers two through six and growing containers two, five, and six.

Hanson says, "Hopefully we don't have to do this recycling thing five years from now because there won't be anything growing in plastic anymore. I think that would be wishful thinking to a very large degree."

So finally, Brent says he hopes one day it'll become the norm to take pots and recycle them back into growing containers.