Vertical Garden from Juice Bottles

thingiverse

My home is like many others, overwhelmed by a never-ending tide of discarded plastic bottles. I wish we could all simply drink water straight from the tap, but my housemate's kids adore fruit juices, my wife is fond of a particular fancy Asian aloe vera drink, and I opt for filtered tap water via my SodaStream to minimize our household's contribution to the staggering demand on single-use plastics. Plastics are one of humanity's most ingenious inventions. They're an incredibly versatile material, requiring no introduction here at Thingiverse, where people appreciate their merits firsthand. These remarkable materials can last indefinitely, yet we use them once and then discard them without a second thought. Most plastics worldwide remain unrecycled, despite the recycling logo on them, and end up in landfills or our oceans, choking marine life and creating massive "garbage islands." These plastic waste islands are not dense enough to be traversed like actual islands but consist of megatons of plastic debris floating in ocean currents. So, how do we address this pressing issue? This problem is nearly as critical as carbon pollution, with the added twist that planting trees won't provide a solution. The answer is straightforward: 1. Reduce our purchase of single-use plastics wherever possible. Choose compostable packaging like uncoated paper or reusable packaging, or opt for no packaging at all. 2. Maximize the reuse of your packaging as much as feasible, and this is where this vertical garden comes into play. 3. Only then should you send it to the waste stream. This system evolved organically when a friend who is an avid gardener stumbled upon an article about using soda bottles to create planters for a vertical garden. I mentioned that we were drowning in good-sized 2-liter plastic bottles at home, and my housemate's kids had collected them from various sources. We experimented with five of the special Aloe drink bottles my wife favors, securing them to an existing (highly expensive!) vertical garden rack using zip ties alongside the pots. The system faced eastward, making lettuce a suitable choice; Alison planted some seedlings in the pots, and the lettuce was remarkable. Next, we began pondering how to expand the system when I came across galvanized reinforcement mesh on hard rubbish. In Melbourne, Australia, we have a civilized system where we receive regular collections of items that are too good to discard but no longer wanted by others. They leave it on the footpath in front of their homes, and council collects it. The unwritten rule for scroungers like me is to keep the pile tidy and leave some for the next scrounger. Stage 2 of the prototype began with this particular find. The reo mesh was secured to Alison's backyard fence, and we started cutting rectangular clear bottles, drilling them to be zip tied to the mesh. I was troubled by our use of zip ties because they're a single-use plastic item, so I designed a hook. I did consider carabiners but found even small ones were expensive; investing in durable plastic hooks to keep long-lasting plastic bottles out of the waste stream is well worth every penny. Here is the recycled bottle vertical garden hook, along with an optional wall bracket that can be screwed into a wooden wall or fence, or dynabolted to a brick wall. The prototype hooks are printed in PLA, which has weathered surprisingly well after a full year of exposure to Melbourne's varied climate. My preference would be to print them from recycled PETG, but Refil has ceased operations. As a result of the success of this gardening system, which can just as easily be employed for cosmetic vertical planting or herbs, I've also established Own Your Plastic, a Facebook page and discussion group (Own Your Plastic Community) to facilitate people sharing their plastics reuse ideas from gardening to arts to tech. Come join the fun!