We had a double drop off of plastic bags this week, putting our current total to 152 pounds and the chance to win a FREE recycled park bench form TREX! Shout out to our #BinIt2WinIt hero, Terri James Porter, who collected the plastic bags in my absence. Don't forget, drop offs can be made at Blue Monkey Tavern, Ryan's Retail, and at the Merchantville Market Off Centre. We accept grocery bags, bubble wrap, case overwrap, clean ziploc/bread bags, newspaper sleeves, etc. are all accepted. Please combine your materials in a single larger bag and compact it as much as possible before tying it up. We're making great progress to our 500 lb. goal!

Don’t just throw away those plastic pots your plants came in. Here are our favorite ways to reuse and recycle plant pots. Plant halo: Take an old plastic pot and cut off the bottom. Push it partway into the soil, and then plant your tomato inside. When you water the plant, the pot will retain the moisture and let it gradually soak into the soil at the roots. Planting guide: When repotting a plant into a larger container, place an empty plastic plant pot the same size as the smaller, original one into the middle of the container, and then continue to fill around it. DIY bug hotel: Stuff a pot with short lengths of bamboo cane, hollow stems, twigs, or corrugated cardboard, and then site the DIY bug hotel on its side in a safe, sheltered spot. Read more here.

Launching Summer 2019 is LowTides Ocean Products and they are celebrating Earth Month with the world's most eco-friendly chair. Built with 2.5 pounds of up-cycled ocean plastic, you too can be the solution to cleaner tides. Look good with a purpose. New styles for a new generation. 95% of Plastics are Used Once; LowTides stylish & durable design is built to make a difference. Each beach chair is made with over 2lb of upcycled plastic. LowTides is the brainchild of a true Jersey boy. Growing up along the water's edge with his cousins on 80th Street in Sea Isle City, New Jersey to now taking his family there, Brent Hutchinson realized that if nothing was done, future generations will not be able to do the same.

Wild Roots New Jersey is a resource and pop-up shop for people who care about environmental sustainability. They write about gardening with native plants, sustainability and raising a nature-lover, and host native plant sales in South Jersey. They will be hosting a Pop-Up Native Plant Sale at Occasionette, 725 Haddon Avenue, Collingswood on Sunday, July 9th form 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Rutgers Master Gardeners, Camden County, and Office of Sustainability present the 2019 Green Garden Fair on Saturday, April 27th from 10:00-2:00 p.m. at the Camden County Environmental Center. The featured speaker is Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. Enjoy cooking demonstrations and tastings, shop annual and perennial plants grown by Master Gardeners, have fun with free kids’ garden projects and tour the Educational Garden. For more information, visit mastergardenerscamdencounty.org.

Until now, scientists thought water moved through trees by osmosis, in a somewhat continuous manner. Now they’ve discovered the trunks and branches of trees are actually contracting and expanding to “pump” water up from the roots to the leaves, similar to the way our heart pumps blood through our bodies. The only difference between our pulse and a tree’s is a tree’s is much slower, “beating” once every two hours or so, and instead of regulating blood pressure, the heartbeat of a tree, regulates water pressure. “We’ve discovered that most trees have regular periodic changes in shape, synchronized across the whole plant … which imply periodic changes in water pressure,” András Zlinszky of Aarhus University in the Netherlands told New Scientist.