7 Ways To Have A Sustainable Eco-Friendly Easter

While Easter is not celebrated to quite the same extent as Christmas is, it is still a time to give gifts, many people choose to decorate their homes and have a big family get-together.

Many countries around the world have a long weekend to look forward to at Easter, with a bank holiday on Good Friday and Easter Monday, allowing them to have a big celebration and visit their families.

But like other holidays from Halloween to Thanksgiving and one off celebrations such as the Coronation, disposable plastic decor items have become ubiquitous.

7 Ways To Have An Eco-Friendly Easter However it is possible to make your Easter celebrations more eco-friendly and sustainable while not losing out on the fun of celebrating at this time of year.

You can avoid adding to the mountains of single use-plastic decor generated at Easter, as well as making considered decisions about the chocolate eggs that you give to friends and family and the food that you choose for your celebration.

Tips For A Green Easter

Here are 7 tips for making your Easter celebrations good for the planet while you minimise the waste that could be produced.

Give an Eco Easter Egg

Chocolate Easter eggs can be one of the most over-packaged products on the market. A huge cardboard box, perhaps a plastic moulding to hold the chocolate egg in place, then a shiny foil wrapping – all to hold a hollow egg, which could weigh between just 80g to 110g.

Many companies have now addressed this and have reduced the amount of packaging used in their Easter eggs, producing eggs without plastic packaging, in a 100% recyclable carboard box.

The best thing to do if you are giving eggs is to choose those with the least packaging –so look out for eggs which have no plastic packaging and are only packaged in recyclable materials such as card, paper and foil.

Image Credit: Bianca Ackermann

Another idea would be to give a traditional hand-painted wooden Easter egg that could be kept for a lifetime. Brought out of storage every year it could then be used as Easter decor - and it could last a lifetime.

Or maybe you could give papier mache eggs which his could then be reused each year and refilled with sweets or gifts.

If you really want to give a traditional type of Easter egg there are lots of fairtrade and organic Easter eggs available, which not only use ethically sourced chocolate, they are careful to use fully recyclable packaging.

So what can you do if you are given an overpackaged egg? If you receive an egg like this, you can minimise the environmental impact.

The cardboard should be able to go into your usual paper and card recycling. You may be able to put the aluminium foil in your kerbside collection, if not your local recycling collection centre should have has facilities for collecting it.

Any plastic packaging is probably not recyclable, unfortunately.

Give An Easter Gift

Or you could simply rebel against the whole tyranny of egg-giving and give your loved ones a thoughtful gift, simply wrapped in sustainable wrapping paper.

A spring themed gift would be perfect. Or you could simply buy them some of their favourite chocolate that is not in the shape of an egg - it will probably be better value too!

Decorate With Flowers

Image Credit: Monika Grabkowska

As Easter is traditionally a spring festival, focusing on new life and fertility (at least in the northern hemisphere), you could decorate with spring flowers, plants and blossoms.

Daffodils and other Narcissi are a classic Easter flower, which could be used as cut flowers or used to decorate as planted pots of mini daffodils.

If you use plants for your decor they can be composted afterwards.

Use Sustainable Easter Decorations

If you like to decorate your home for Easter, resist the temptation to buy new plastic, single-use decor items every year.

Invest in fewer, higher quality Easter decorations that you can store away and bring out every year.

Like your favourite Christmas decorations, they can become part of your family Easter traditions. A reusable fabric bunting in spring colours would be beautiful.

If you favour more kitschy decor, rabbit or chick themed ornaments are a perennial favourite.

An Eco Easter Lunch

Like the traditional Christmas dinner, a big family meal for Easter can produce a huge amount of uneaten food too.

Buy only as much food as you can a realistically eat and choose a sensibly sized bird or joint of meat.

Food scraps and the bones can be added to your food waste collection, and all your vegetable peelings can be composted.

Why not take the opportunity at Easter to try something different and more sustainable for lunch such as a nut roast or fish.

Get Creative!

Creative types will find a plethora of ideas for making their own Easter decor for recycled materials.

You could make your own reusable bunting from scrap fabrics.

Decorate real eggs with paint or felt tip pen.

Make a sock bunny from an old sock

Paint old tin cans or jars with an Easter design to use with a tealight.

Shop Local

Wherever you decide to get your food, gifts, eggs and Easter decor, remember to shop local and support local businesses.

From eggs to meat and all your vegetables, reduce the number of food miles and if finances will stretch to it, buy organic where possible.

Some Interesting Facts About Chocolate Easter Eggs

Approximately 80 million chocolate eggs are sold each year in the UK.
A total of £308.2m was spent on Easter eggs in 2016.
The Cadbury Creme Egg is the most popular Easter Egg in the UK and over 500 million Creme Eggs are made every year worldwide. That means that we eat an average 3.5 Cadbury Creme Eggs each in this country.
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 than the actual egg. They estimated that 4,370 tonnes of cardboard and 160 tonnes of foil waste was created by packaging in 2007.

7 Ways To Have A Sustainable Eco-Friendly Easter

Tips For A Green Easter

Some Interesting Facts About Chocolate Easter Eggs

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