@blossomandbranchfarm: Folks, all I want is for you to have safer home-grown produce with a lower environmental footprint—and that means most grow bags don’t make the cut over here. Most grow bags on the market are made from recycled plastic water bottles—which sounds great, on the surface. The reality is not so lovely. Recycled plastic as fabric is one of the biggest greenwashing marketing stunts of our era. But it’s actually a really ugly and unsustainable process. Not only does the process of recycling plastic water bottles contribute (literal) TONS of microplastics to our water supplies that cannot be filtered, there are additional chemicals added during the processing that mean higher rates of pthalate leaching along with other unknown chemicals. The microplastic shedding from these “fabrics” is exacerbated by moisture and UV exposure, two things that occur when gardening with grow bags. These microplastics end up in the soil within the bags and are uptaken by plants, ending up in our produce and also contaminating the soil. The good news is, there are plastic free alternatives out there (like the one I’m using here) if you can’t grow in the ground and are limited to using grow bags. Seek out 100% natural materials like hemp and wool and verify that they don’t contain polyester or plastic fibers. By all means, do your own research beyond what the companies selling you products are telling you. Some info is included in the links below: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/27/recycled-reused-food-plastic-toxins-study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389422001984 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653522036682 https://pureh2o.co.uk/recycled-plastic-toxic-problem/ #gardening #garden #growbags #containergardening #sustainable

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Saturday 01 June 2024 18:57:17 GMT