Plastic plant tags can be cheap to buy, for example, in Singapore, we can grab a handful of nicely-made, ready-to-use, white plastic plant tags from Daiso (a Japanese store that sells everything for just SGD 2). But we can make similar plant tags for free most of the time from things that we usually discard or find around the home.
One may ask, “Why bother to make such cheap things?”
The reason that I do so because I can help to reduce waste by doing some recycling to help save the environment. My family have a habit of packing back our meals from the coffeshops and we are left with many disposable food containers which most other families would discard right away after finishing their meals.
I made it a point to everyone in the house to not throw these away because I will eventually find a use for them in the garden. I told my family members to wash them clean with soap and leave the containers at a corner of the house to dry.
An example of a disposable plastic food container (in this case, it is a cup with a lid). One can cut it down to thin strips which can be made into recycled plant tags.
To make your own plant recycled plant tags, all one needs to do is to cut the container into thin strips with a width that you find suitable, as shown in the picture above. Then, simply use a permanent marker to write down whatever information you want to put down on the tag, most commonly, the plant’s name or seed sowing date.
Words that are written on a transparent strip of plastic can be difficult to see and read. To overcome that, I pasted masking tape on the reverse side and because the tape’s white in colour, the background that resulted helps too make the words more visible.
The topmost plant tag is a one that is commercially available. The one in the center is a transparent plastic strip used to make the recycled plant tag. The one located at the bottom is the recycled plant tag with a white masking tape background which helped to make the words written on the tag more visible.
The recycled plant tag in use in my light garden.
Whatever I have mentioned are just the basics. Please let your creative juice flow to help you make more fanciful tags. For example, one can use coloured tape instead of the white masking tape that I have used in the example above.
The plastic strips can be cut to fit the width of the tape one is using so just one strip of sticky take will suffice. I used two strips of sticky tape in my flimpsy example above because I have cut too thick a width.
One can even punch a hole on one end where a string or twist tie can go through it so that the tag can be tied or hung from a plant!
