tina wrote:
[...]
I did see a little device in a gardening mag. "make your own seedling
pots" out of newspaper. But it was £13.00 + £5 p&p. Nice idea as your
recycling your spare newspaper, but £18.00 seems a bit expensive.
Why are all these good recycling ideas / devices so expensive. (water
saving, compost bins etc)
With the government so desperate for us to recycle more, these devices
should be free to those who want to use them (or at least heavily
subsidised at least)

It's just a genteel rip-off. No special equipment is needed to make pots
out of newspaper, just a little imagination. They aren't brilliant, I
can tell you from my once-only experience, as they go weak and floppy
when wet, but if you fit several into an ice-cream container or similar
deep tray they'll stand up well enough. Make a tube of the diameter you
want, and secure either with a staple or by turning in the top edge, or
both; you can then either do the same to the bottom, or tuck the bottom
edge over to make a base. (I bet the Japanese have an origami recipe for
the purpose -- might even be on the web if you Google something like
origami flower pot.)

If planting out the whole thing rather than taking the plant out, I'd
tear the "pot" in a few places while doing so -- but it'll probably
happen anyway -- to give the roots a rapid escape route.

You'd probably be doing the planet a bigger favour if you re-used yogurt
pots and things, and handed the papers in for recycling (news papers are
on partly recycled paper, which is why they use that horrible ink which
comes off on your hands)


How much money would it save the government to issue every home in the
uk with a descent compost bin & a water butt?
[...]

I don't imagine it would save the government anything at all!

--
Mike.