Tips To Make Your Easter More Sustainable This Year
Longer brighter days, daffodils blooming, getting the whole family together and baskets of chocolate. These are all things we think of when Easter rolls around. One thing that doesn't come to mind? The waste. There is a whopping £415million spent on Easer Eggs in the UK every year. Yes, £415 million. And with each of those eggs comes the plastic, foil and fake grass that goes straight on the landfills. No, you don't have to cancel the Easter egg hunt or not indulge in just one more chocolate egg. But, there are easy ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your Easter Sunday.
Here are some tips to make your Easter Sunday a bit more sustainable this year:
Go Plastic Free.
At Open House Deli we can’t express enough how important plastic free packaging and products are to us. Avoiding plastic packaging on Easter eggs, decorations and wrapping on greeting cards. Plenty of Easter eggs are cardboard wrapped. If you can’t escape the plastic (we know, it can be tricky) then think about buying decorations or eggs in bulk so you avoid the unnecessary added packaging. And since 25% of the weight of easter eggs are packaging, it really is a lot of unnecessary waste.
Talking Tables' Recycled Easter Napkins are a great alternative to the plastic packed, single use decorations at major supermarkets. ToyChoc offer a great alternative to single-use plastic wrap gifts for kids; they're 100% organic
dairy, nut, gluten, soy and completely plastic free!
Avoid Plastic Easter grass like the plague!
That added packing gets thrown straight into the landfill, where takes up to 500 years to decompose!
Look for ethically sourced chocolate
Chocolate that has sustainable, ethically sourced origins is insurmountably better for the planet, the people who make it, and for your gut health. Gulnaz Khan (Climate Editor of Ted Talk) explains that there is a steep price we pay for cheap chocolate. With the average cocoa farmer earns $.50-$1.25 USD per day, the modern chocolate industry keeps these farmers impoverished and fueling child labour. The demand for cheap chocolate options is causing deforestation worldwide as companies seek to find cheap areas to unethically farm the beans. By looking for ethically sourced chocolate when hunting you are choosing to protect the people who work hard to source you that chocolatey treat, and the planet too.
Here are some awesome labels to look out for:
Conscious Chocolate is a great example of a thoughtfully sustainable chocolate brand. Their delicious chocolate is wrapped in plastic free, recyclable, biodegradable and home compostable packaging. All of their chocolates are vegan, raw, organic and produced in an eco-factory powered by renewable energy. They really have taken into account every single little detail when it comes to how their chocolate production looks after the environment.
Recycle Responsibly!
Estimates indicate that the 80 million chocolate eggs sold in the UK at Easter generate around 4,370 tonnes of card and 160 tonnes of foil waste. Make sure to scrunch that foil wrapper up real good before throwing it in the recycling bin - this stops any loose bits of foil getting lost in the waste process. Cardboard = recycling, that’s a no brainer. If you do have plastic in your wrapping, why not save it and repurpose it for something else later? Gift wrapper, DIY projects, use your imagination!
Shop Local
The journey that your chosen easter egg goes on before it gets hidden behind the plant for pot for the easter egg hunt is one of the biggest factors in the climate cost of Easter. From the Cacoa bean to the carbon footprint of the plastic used to wrap it, Easter eggs really wrack up the air miles before getting to the supermarket shelves. Shopping locally is the best way to avoid such a big footprint for a tiny treat. Shop locally, and trust that your local eco-store has thought about all the factors that go into sustainable chocolate for you.
Having an Easter that's fun for the kids, overflowing with yummy chocolate and is kind to the planet too has never been easier.