There is something quietly satisfying about finding a second purpose for an ordinary object. A yoghurt pot becomes a home for a seedling, a cardboard box disappears beneath a new vegetable bed, and the cardboard tube from a loo roll provides just enough depth for the first roots of a young bean.
Recycle Week, which runs from 14 to 20 September 2026, is a timely reminder to look again at the everyday things we throw away. This year’s campaign is about ‘rescuing’ recyclable items from the general rubbish bin – but, for gardeners, there is another possibility too.
Before something reaches the recycling bin, could it have one more useful life in the vegetable garden?
A productive garden has always been a place of resourcefulness. Gardeners save seed, make compost, mend tools and find uses for things that might otherwise be discarded. Long before ‘reuse’ became part of our everyday vocabulary, an old container on the potting bench was simply too useful to throw away.
Here are a few household cast-offs worth rescuing.
Cardboard boxes
A delivery box may not look like gardening material, but plain brown cardboard can be remarkably useful.
Remove plastic tape, labels and staples and flatten the box. Sheets of cardboard can be laid over grass and weeds when creating a new vegetable bed, with compost or other organic material placed over the top. As the months pass, the cardboard softens and gradually breaks down.
Smaller pieces of plain cardboard can also be torn up and added to the compost heap. They provide useful carbon-rich ‘brown’ material, particularly when mixed with grass clippings, vegetable peelings and other wetter ingredients.
The important word here is plain. Avoid heavily coated, plasticised or glitter-covered card.
Loo roll tubes
Few household objects lend themselves quite so neatly to the potting bench.
Cardboard loo roll tubes can be filled with peat-free compost and used for sowing individual seeds. Their depth makes them particularly handy for plants that quickly produce a good root system, such as peas and beans.
Stand the tubes closely together in a tray so that they don’t fall over, and keep an eye on watering – cardboard pots can dry out surprisingly quickly.
When planting time arrives, the softened cardboard can be planted with the seedling, making sure that none is left protruding above the soil where it can wick moisture away from the roots.
Yoghurt pots and food tubs
Wash them, pierce a few drainage holes in the bottom and the humble yoghurt pot becomes a perfectly serviceable plant pot.
They’re useful for sowing individual seeds and for potting on young seedlings. Larger food tubs can be pressed into service for mixing small quantities of compost, collecting berries or keeping plant labels together.
The advantage is that they can be washed and used again and again.
Eventually, of course, plastic becomes brittle or damaged. That’s the point to check whether your local authority accepts that particular type of plastic for recycling rather than consigning it automatically to the rubbish.
Fruit and vegetable punnets
Those clear plastic punnets that arrive with tomatoes, berries and other fruit and vegetables can be particularly useful during the sowing season.
A punnet with a clear lid makes a simple miniature propagator. Sow into a suitable container inside it, close the lid to retain warmth and moisture, and ventilate regularly once seedlings appear.
Punnets without lids can still earn their keep. Use them to organise seed packets, hold plant labels or carry freshly picked strawberries, raspberries and other small crops back to the kitchen.
Newspaper and brown packing paper
Paper has plenty of uses before it reaches the recycling collection.
Newspaper can be useful when you’re potting up plants, providing a temporary covering for the bench and making spilled compost much easier to gather afterwards.
Sheets can also be used beneath organic mulches to help suppress annual weeds, while clean paper can be shredded and added in modest quantities to the compost heap.
Brown packing paper can be treated in much the same way, provided it is plain paper without plastic coatings or excessive sticky tape.
Glass jars
Don’t be too quick to put every jam jar into the bottle bank.
Clean, dry jars make excellent containers for home-saved seed. Beans, peas and many flower seeds can be labelled with the variety and year and stored somewhere cool, dry and dark until sowing time returns.
Jars are equally useful in the shed for keeping small objects together – although glass and busy potting benches aren’t always the happiest combination, so keep them somewhere secure.
Ordinary jars are less suitable as plant pots. They have no drainage holes, and waterlogged compost is rarely good news for a vegetable seedling.
Food tins
Washed food tins make handy containers for pencils, labels, string and the collection of miscellaneous objects that inevitably gathers on a potting bench.
There is more caution needed here than with a yoghurt pot. Cut metal can leave extremely sharp edges, so check tins carefully before reusing them and keep them away from places where children may reach them.
For that reason, I prefer tins as storage containers rather than plant pots. When they are no longer useful, they can return to the recycling system.
Egg boxes
Cardboard egg boxes are another useful addition to the gardener’s collection.
They are particularly good for chitting seed potatoes. Sit each potato in its own compartment with the end carrying the most ‘eyes’ uppermost, and leave the box somewhere light, cool and frost-free while the shoots develop.
They’re also handy for sorting seeds and labels during a sowing session.
You can sow directly into the individual compartments, although their small volume means compost dries rapidly and seedlings soon need moving into something larger. For most purposes, I find their other gardening uses rather more practical.
Once an egg box becomes too battered for another season, plain cardboard versions can be torn up for the compost heap.
Plastic bottles
Clean plastic drinks bottles are surprisingly versatile in the vegetable garden.
Carefully remove the bottom from a large clear bottle and it can become a miniature cloche for a newly planted seedling. It offers some protection from wind and cooler conditions while the plant establishes.
Leave the cap off for ventilation and keep an eye on the weather. Even a small plastic cloche can become remarkably warm when the sun appears.
Bottles can also be adapted for watering containers and growbags, particularly during the warmer months.
Only reuse bottles that originally contained food or drink. Containers that have held household chemicals, cleaning products or other potentially harmful substances have no place around edible crops.
Old cotton clothing
Not everything worth rescuing needs to become a plant pot.
A worn-out cotton T-shirt can be cut into soft strips for tying tomatoes and other plants to supports. Unlike thin string, a broad strip of fabric spreads the pressure across the stem and is less likely to cut into tender growth.
Old cotton fabric can also become cleaning cloths for the greenhouse or shed.
Avoid synthetic fabrics for garden ties where possible. As they deteriorate, they can leave small pieces of plastic behind.
Paper bags
The paper bags that increasingly come home with fruit, vegetables and bakery purchases can have another outing too.
Once completely dry, they are useful for collecting and drying seeds. Place seed heads in a labelled paper bag and keep them somewhere airy and dry. As they finish drying, many seeds will naturally fall from their pods or flower heads into the bag.
Unlike sealed plastic, paper allows moisture to escape – important when you’re trying to store seed rather than grow a crop of mould.
A useful second life – not a second rubbish bin
There is a balance to be struck.
Reusing household objects shouldn’t mean filling the greenhouse with dozens of pots, tubs and containers that will never actually be used. A cracked yoghurt pot you don’t need hasn’t been rescued simply because it has moved from the kitchen bin to the garden shed.
Keep the things that genuinely have a purpose. Use them for as long as they remain useful. Then, when they’ve reached the end of that second life, recycle them where local facilities allow.
It is also worth remembering that recycling collections differ between local authorities.
The gardener’s habit of looking twice
Perhaps the most useful thing to take from Recycle Week isn’t a complicated new system at all. It is simply the habit of looking at something twice before throwing it away.
Could that cardboard help create a new vegetable bed?
Could the yoghurt pot raise next year’s tomatoes?
Could the jar hold seeds from this summer’s beans?
Could an old T-shirt support those tomatoes rather than being thrown away?
And if the answer is no, can the item be recycled instead?
Gardens are already places of renewal. Fallen leaves become leaf mould, vegetable peelings become compost, compost feeds the soil, and this year’s plants provide seeds for the next.
Giving an everyday household object another useful life fits rather neatly into that rhythm.
Sometimes rescuing something from the bin is as simple as carrying it out through the back door.
Further Reading: Grow Your Own Food: Save Money & Eat Well, How to Keep Your Vegetable Garden Productive into Autumn, What to Sow in September: Vegetables, Salads & Herbs, Runner Bean Chutney: A Taste of the September Garden, How to Store Potatoes for Winter
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