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Everyday swaps

Garden without plastic pots, mulch and twine

Nursery pots, plastic mulch and polypropylene twine are rarely recycled; terracotta, coir, paper pots, jute twine and organic mulch replace them.

Swap out
Plastic nursery pots, mulch film and twine
Swap in
Reused or terracotta pots, paper or coir pots, organic mulch, jute twine
Impact
3 / 5
Cost
1 / 3
Effort
2 / 3
Grams of plastic avoided per person per year
600
Evidence link
materbi.com/en/
Watch out for
Biodegradable mulch films fragment before they disappear and need warm soil; reusing pots you already own beats buying anything new.

Reuse the pots you have, return nursery pots to garden centres that take them, sow into paper or coir pots, and use straw, bark or compost as mulch instead of plastic sheeting. Tie plants with jute or cotton twine.

A year of new nursery pots, trays and twine is around 600 g of plastic for a keen gardener. Certified compostable mulch films (Novamont's Mater-Bi, EN 13432) exist for growers, but for a home garden organic mulch avoids the question entirely.

The catch: biodegradable mulch film still leaves fragments in soil while it breaks down and depends on soil temperature; coir pots are shipped long distances.

Page updated 22 September 2026. How we check sources