I may be in the minority in my view here - but I think growing your own veggies is better than buying them, even if you were to grow them in plastic pots. Are they "safe"? I don't know... could they leech? maybe... would the food be "better" than bought? You bet! You know what chemicals you did and did not put on them, you know the type of soil you used to grow them in. You know you used plastic but you do know... Organic farms can use plastic mulches for their fields as long as the plastic is removed after the growing season, so even if you are buying organic in the stores or at a farmer's market there really is no way of knowing if plastic was used in their production.
link to organic law
§ 205.601 Synthetic substances allowed for use in organic crop production.
(ii) Plastic mulch and covers (petroleum-based other than polyvinyl chloride (PVC)).
I don't like suggesting that you go out and purchase new pots for your portable garden, whether it's plastic or clay - keep an eye out, ask around, maybe call a garden center/greenhouse and ask if they recycle pots and if you can have a few, scavange from your neighbors and keep the plastic pots they have from getting to a landfill or the recycle center!
Growing your own veggies, even if just a few is going to save food miles and help with Life-Cycle Assessment!
If my option was fresh home grown veggies grown in plastic or store bought veggies, I'd risk the possible absorption from the plastic pots over the store bought ones, even if I knew the store ones were fresh and organically grown, food from my own backyard or frontyard is most likely going to have a better postive long term affect on my health and my family's health than any food that is grown someplace else and brought to me.
I've had mixed results growing housplants in clay and plastic, some plants do better in the clay ones, some better in the plastic. The clay pots dry out quicker, some plants like that, some don't. (would be a neat science project!!)
I wonder what exactly is in the clay pots? Are there heavy metals in they clay itself? do they leech? If they were used with chemical fertalizers or soils at one time since they are so porous could chemicals still be lingering?
From an enviromental view, I wonder which would be better, plactic or clay? I can think of alot for the plastics but I wonder about they clay? It's being pulled from the earth, how renewable is clay? Where exactly is it being mined from? Who's land is being destroyed? Which habitats are suffering? What costs are involved, both in a dollar amount and a humanatarian one for those pots to be made? How much water is used/ is there pollution caused from making them? How much energy is consumed in firing them? fuel in shipping them? What type of work/job conditions are there for the people making the pots? Then what use do clay pots have once they break? where do they go? what use for them then? could they be ground up to make more? Is it actually being done.....
