I don't think we can really totally get away from this problem without spending a fortune in clay, or just growing directly in the ground. For all my small containers I use clay... those are cheap. But larger clay pots are outrageously expensive! I'm sure newspaper leaches its ink, not to mention whatever is in the paper product, itself. Minerals/chemicals in water... especially treated city water... cause PVC to leach its toxicity into the water. That's how I understand it. It's the worst. We're doomed! We can either go with the flow and use the least toxic items, or we can forget about container gardening and just grow right in ground... organically of course! Think back to a time before plastics and petroleum products were part of our world... there were a lot less illnesses and diseases... we are slowly killing ourselves with all our "modern" inventions and waste from those inventions, or pollution.

dancinglemons: Yes, thanks for the link. It is exactly that type of "roughneck" container which I plan on buying. They are significantly more rigid / thick than other storage containers and as the link says they block a lot of light but not all. It is however encouraging to see that if you get the "indigo blue" color it blocks algae growth, according to that website. It's encouraging to see a hydronic dealer selling them for this specific purpose :) Also I've seen these containers used even in the how-to hydroponics book written by Keith Roberto, and some of them are outdoor systems. My only major current concern is the temperature of the nut. soluction. I plan on getting some type of submersible thermometer to lay on the bottom of the reservoir so I can track how that's doing. It'll probably be ok now heading into winter but I may have to sink the container a foot or so into the ground come summertime - not sure yet.

Personally I think this entire notion of how hazardous lead is has gotten out of hand. The modern doomsday profits would have us believe if we sleep by an open window with lead paint on the sill that we will be brain dead in 6 months. I am 59 years old and I am thinking back to my childhood. I was born in 1947 and plastics were still in there infancy in those days. Even into the mid to late 50's our toys were made of wood (generally painted with lead paint), tin, potmetal and lead. One of my alltime favorite toys was an electric hotplate with a ladle to melt lead and a set of 8 molds to cast toy lead soldiers about 5" high. In those days we could run to the local hardware store and buy plumbers 1lb."Pig Lead" ingots for $.08/lb. (The same lead used to make the oakum & lead joints in sewer pipes.) When times were hard and my cousins and I didn't have any money we would run down to the grocery store on the corner. When people would go inside to buy groceries we would steal the lead wheel weights off their tire rims. Every boy in the neighborhood knew we had the molds and melting pot so it was not uncommon for 6 or 8 boys to congregate at our house and melt upwards of 10 lbs of lead in a day and repeat this 2 or 3 times a week. It must also be noted that when you poured the mold there was always a small piece of waste lead attached to the head of the soldier from the top of the mold that had to be cut off. Understanding that 7-10year old boys were not permitted to carry a knife and having no fancy metal shears the solution was obvious to us, we simply bit the piece of lead off and spit the excess piece of lead back in the melting pile. By the end of a days production all of us boys would have a light grey film of lead on our hands. At 12 years old my cousin and I acquired a mold to cast fishing weights and we had a fair summer business supplying fishing weights to men and boys alike by the local fishing hole only by now our volume had expanded to 10 to 20lbs of lead per day. When playing with lead got boring we would go behind the local HVAC shop and pull the old thermostats out of their trash bin. As soon as we got them home we would break them open to reveal the little glass vial mercury switch, which we broke open with a hammer and slide the mercury across a piece of newspaper into a puddle where we could then lift it an put the liquid mercury in a mason jar, of course in those days no one called it mercury, we called it "Quick silver" because you could dip a penny in the mercury then polish it between your thumb and finger to a high luster like real silver. Now while many of you may be appalled at that type of play I would like to make it plain that this was typical conduct of boys in those days. Are we all brain dead today? Not on your life. In fact, I recently saw a graph of scholatic achievement in the USA from 1900 to date. As one might expect the graph was very low from 1900 until the late 1930's where it began a slow rise through the war years (39-45) then it began a very sharp upturn. In fact the highest scholastic achievements in U.S. History occured between 1964 and 1966 then it took an instant spiral down and today the average is only slightly higher than it was in 1935. I graduated high school in 1965 and in 2005 at our 40th high school graduation anniversary they conducted a pole of our classmates. Out of the 306 students who graduated in our class not one had suffered any long term ill effects attributed to lead. Not bad for a generation that grew up with lead paint, lead toys, lead water pipes, lead solder on our copper pipes, extremely high lead content in the gasoline and oh yes, occassionally we even had real lead pencils in school, but we hated those because you had to lick the lead to make it write better. Another interesting fact that was discovered at our anniversary. Not one member of our entire class could even remember anyone having asthma in those days, but then when we grew up their were no home computers or video games. We were compelled to go out in the fresh air to play.

Konrad, I'm all about conservation and wise use of resources.... All plastic and aluminum waste generated in my household is recycled (there is no local glass recycling, or we'd do that, too)... and all paper/cardboard, scrap lumber, tree prunings, etc., go into a ditch here on the farm as a form of composting and erosion control. To my kids' consternation, I'm still drinking out of several (recyclable) plastic water bottles that I first started using several years ago... I just refill them from the tap when they're empty. Worried, I am not. That said, I'm a scientist of sorts... and much of the stuff out there on the internet about 'chemicals leaching out of' plastic bottles, packaging, etc., is hysterical scare-mongering with no scientific basis behind it. No dioxins, no pthalates, no BPA in disposable plastic bottles, cling wrap, sandwich bags, etc. I do not spray anything in my orchard... and yes, the insect pests have a heyday, but there's still more fruit than I can use. But... I'd be much less concerned about eating a 'bagged' apple than one produced in an orchard...even one managed with a minimal spray program - and I'd have no qualms about eating the 'sprayed' apple... and probably wouldn't even bother washing it.