Recycle your Easter

green | April 3rd, 2010 - 9:50 AM

How To Have A Green Easter

Easter Eggs are possible one of the most over-packaged products on the market.  A huge cardboard box, a plastic moulding to hold the egg in place, a shiny foil wrapping all to hold a hollow egg, weighing only maybe 110g.

If you receive an egg like this, you can minimise the environmental impact; make sure the cardboard box goes into the paper recycling, and find out if your local recycling collection centre has facilities for plastics or aluminium foil – some places do collect this now.

The best thing to do if you are giving eggs is to choose those with the least packaging  - chose ones that are only wrapped in foil, or give an Easter gift instead. How about traditional hand-painted Easter eggs and papier mache eggs using the plastic packaging from an egg as a mould?This could then be decorated and filled with sweets or gifts.

If you absolutely must give a traditional type of Easter egg there are fair-trade and organic ones available from Ethical Superstore and Natural Collection.

Some interesting facts about Easter from Nigel’s Eco Store

  • Approximately 80 million chocolate eggs were sold in the UK in 2007.
  • A total of £336m was spent on Easter eggs in 2007.
  • In the same year, £75m was spent on Fair Trade eggs.
  • A survey by Friends of the Earth (FoE), Scotland revealed that in some cases, for every £1 spent on eggs, consumers could be spending more on packaging. It estimated that 4,370 tonnes of cardboard and 160 tonnes of foil waste was created by packaging in 2007.
  • This year, the UK is set to spend £520m on Easter eggs.

thanks to Reduce Reuse Recycle: How To Have A Green Easter

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