Introduction: Newspaper Planters

Today, we're going to teach you how to be green while planting. While you'd normally have plastic planters or pots to throw away after you planted your flowers, using this idea, this will not be an issue. Not only will you be saving many plastic planters, but you will also be able to reuse many newspapers that could potentially be thrown away and add to environmental waste. This idea is quick and easy for anyone to do and is worth it in the end since you'll be contributing to saving the Earth.

***picture found on pinterest

Step 1: Materials

In order to complete this project, you will not need to go to craft stores and dig for specific items. There are really only a few materials that you will need to get this done, most of which you can find in your own home.

Step 2: What You'll Need

The first step of this project is to collect newspapers and bottles that you would like to use for the project. You really don't need that many, however, if you're only planting a few flowers since each newspaper has 16 pages. In fact, we only used one or two school newspapers that we found left in our classroom and were able to make ten planters. In addition, like we mentioned in our materials page, be sure to get bottles or cans that you can wrap the page of a newspaper around. We used an Arizona bottle that was 591 mL, but as long as you're able to roll and the page of a newspaper around the bottle, it will work.

Step 3: Beginning to Construct

In this step, you will begin to construct the planters. To do this, you should open a newspaper and pull out one page. If the page is too large (as ours were) you'll need to cut it down the line where it has been folded.

Step 4: Folding

After you've gotten your newspaper ready for the project, you will need to fold each page into thirds. This will help to make sure the newspapers will be thick enough to support the soil that you'll be filling them with.

Step 5: Shaping the Newspapers

Now, you have to begin rolling the newspapers around the bottle. Make sure that you make this tight enough so that they do not fall apart once you fill them up. This step is crucial towards the final product of this project. Tape the newspaper at the end, and make sure it is secure enough to keep in the soil.

Step 6: Finishing the Planter

After you rolled the newspaper around the bottle, slide it up towards the top so that about 4 centimeters of the newspaper are hanging off so that it can be folded in. Once this is complete, fold the edges in and tape it to form the bottom of the planter. Now, you've made a planter.

Step 7: All Finished!

And now you're done! Repeat these steps until you have the amount of planters that you need for your flowers.

Step 8: Finding Dimensions

To fill up the planters with the proper amount of soil, now you have to measure the planters to figure out how much soil you need to fill them up. To do this, you'll have to find the dimensions of your planters. Use a ruler to measure the planter across the top for the diameter. Then, measure from the bottom of the planter to the top to find the height. Then, you can find the volume of the planter by following the equation on the diagram below. On this diagram, you will see our measurements, but you can redo this using your own. To find the most accurate surface area, find the area of the piece of newspaper that you're using in addition to the formula shown.

Step 9: Units

Now that you have found the volume, you know how much soil to put into the planter. You have probably found the units to be in cubic centimeters or cubic inches. At this point, we found out that cubic centimeters are equal to milliliters, so we used this unit to make it easier to measure how much soil to use. If you used inches, you can use this conversion formula to find out how to change the unit to cups so that it is easier to measure: 1 cubic inch = 0.0692640693 US cups. Because this conversion isn't very simple, we preferred to use centimeters, but either way works.

Step 10: Why Will This Help the Environment?

This project contributes to the environment because it eliminates the need for plastic planters and saves old newspapers that would get thrown away. Rather than use plastic and throw it away, the newspaper can be directly planted into the ground and is biodegradable. In addition, all new plants are helpful to the environment. These planters are a great way to save extra paper and save money on plastic planters, as well.