BLOOMINGTON -- A garden pot recycling effort has prevented more than 18,000 pounds of pots from going to landfills and produced more than $1,300 to help keep the program going and expand it to other areas.

East Jordan Plastics of Michigan, which makes garden pots and trays from recycled ones, picked up the first semi-trailer truckload of recycled materials from Bloomington this week.

The 23 pallets contained pots and trays recycled in 2008, said Jerry Swartz, a McLean County master gardener and one of the program organizers. Another 8,000 pots were given away for reuse by Olympia High School, local gardeners and Green View Nursery, he said.

East Jordan paid between 8 and 25 cents per pound for the material.

Swartz said the money will be used to help with 2010 program costs. He hopes to expand to Fairbury, Lincoln, Decatur and Champaign next year. The group, now named Illinois Plastic Pot Recycling Initiative, added bins in Sangamon and Fulton counties and the Peoria area this year.

Bins also are located at three Twin City garden centers - AB Hatchery and Garden Center, Green View Nursery and Wendall Niepagen Greenhouses. Master Gardener Robin Van Dermay said several other garden shops want the bins.

"It's good exposure for their business," she said.

Volunteers clean, sort and bale the recycled pots and trays, but money is needed to buy wood to make the collection bins. The program initially got funding from the McLean County Solid Waste Program but Swartz said this year organizers found private funding - a $1,500 grant from Monrovia Nurseries of California and a $500 community grant from State Farm Insurance Cos.

It also got space for the operation at the Occupational Developmental Center at Crossroads Center. That space now is in jeopardy because a cut in state funding forced ODC to essentially stop operations.

"So far everything has fallen into place," Swartz said. "We all feel somewhere along the line, it will continue to do that."