Compostable pots are an emerging need for greenhouses

Added on 15 September 2022

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Compostable pots are an emerging need for greenhouses

All across the country, garden centers and growers are gradually making their thumbs a little bit greener. "I've just always had a desire to be sustainable," says Nick Sargent, co-owner of Sargent's Nursery in Rochester, MN. "For 20 years, I've been pretty heavily invested in pot recycling and trying to find different avenues to recycle plastic nursery pots." Ideally, he'd like to sell all of his plants in compostable containers by 2032.

Eco-Pots are Eco-Friendly

Last spring, Sargent and his management team put Proven Winners' new USDA-certified compostable pots to the test. They brought in 2,000 4˝-inch Eco-Pots to accommodate a fraction of the nursery's 100,000 plants.

"We're going to see how they perform in a garden, see what our customers think, and then try to make a determination whether we can get a higher price if it's grown in that pot," he says.

Proven Winners' Eco-Pots are made out of polylactic acid (PLA) derived from corn, switchgrass, and sugar beets. A new manufacturing technique processes the plant starch into a biopolymer that "looks, acts, and performs like its traditional cousin: petroleum-based plastics," according to Proven Winners' website. But there's one big difference.