Leading growers honored for recycling efforts

Eleven of North America’s largest growers are leading an effort to improve the industry’s sustainability by recycling water bottles into plant containers. The success of their programs was recently recognized by induction into the Million Bottle Club, an award given to growers who have recycled over one million plastic water bottles into plant containers. The program is organized by McConkey’s rEarth plastic water bottle recycling program.

“Combined, the Million Bottle Club honorees have recycled 50 million bottles by growing in rEarth—that means 50 million fewer bottles polluting our oceans, streets, and landfills. Stacked end-to-end, that’s enough water bottles to stretch from Tokyo to New York, and back,” said Dave Edenfield, Business Development Manager at McConkey. “By choosing a 100% recycled, curbside-recyclable grow container made from water bottles, these 11 growers and others across the country are making a widespread positive impact on the environment.”

Plastic water bottle waste is a major environmental concern, with only 1 in 4 bottles recycled and 2.2 billion bottles thrown away every year. Products such as rEarth help to reduce the strain on the environment by diverting bottles away from landfills and re-forming them into curbside recyclable grower containers.

This year’s Million Bottle Award recipients include: 10 million bottles or more – Colorama Wholesale Nursery; 5 million bottles or more – Armstrong Garden Centers, Do Right’s Plant Growers; 1 million bottles or more – Kawahara Nursery, Cal Color Growers, YC Nurseries, Hong’s Nursery, Iwasaki Brothers, Smith Gardens, Certified Plant Growers and Sidhu & Sons.

The Million Bottle Award will be announced each summer, and is awarded based on the cumulative number of bottles recycled since the grower began using rEarth. “Many of our customers were very close to the million bottle mark this year,” Edenfield said. “We look forward to welcoming them to the Million Bottle Club next August.”