Use It Up, Wear It Out, Recycle It!

We try to be as economical as we can be on our little farm in the country. Grow our own veggies, compost, and organically grow good stuff, and use our old hand tools as well as we can. We realized that we may have taken it too far recently when we used this really old plastic bucket to prop up a watermelon growing on the fence, and it just crumbled away under the pressure.

This bucket has had a million uses around the old place, from a home for newly hatched chicks to holding the water to mop the floor, to a mixing tank for plaster to fix the walls inside the home, and carrying water to keep the new baby plants moist and growing in a dry season. It's so old and tired that the color has almost faded away from sitting in the sun, and now, the whole thing is crumbling away in chunks and almost fell over and dumped this nice watermelon into the grass. It's not ready to pick yet, and it'd be a shame to lose that yumminess. I think it's probably time to give up on this old bucket and get rid of it.

Is it still recyclable, do you think?