The Easter holidays are over, and I’m sure you have munched through a lot of your Easter eggs by now, but how much packaging waste was created?
Around 80 million Easter eggs are sold in the UK each year which is estimated to produce more than 8,000 tonnes of waste just from Easter egg packaging and cards alone! That’s the same as 40 blue whales – the biggest whale on the planet!
We decided to review a number of Easter eggs and chocolate bars to see which ones were the most sustainable, so we know for next year what to look for and how to make greener choices as a consumer.
Here are the selection of Easter eggs and chocolate bars!
First we looked at Lindor – all the packaging was recyclable apart from the wrappers for the individual chocolates inside.
Here are the markings on the packaging to tell you what can go in the recycling bin and what has to go in the general waste
Next we looked more closely at the Mini Eggs Easter egg by Cadbury – Most of the packaging was recyclable except for the mini eggs bag holding the smaller eggs. What we did notice was that the box was huge compared to the actual chocolate egg. That is just not very good, we need to consider the size because the larger it is, it takes up more room to transport and extra delivery trucks out on the road create extra carbon emissions!
What about the Flake Easter egg? Well, the box was made of cardboard so it could be recycled but the ribbon can’t so you would need to repurpose this ribbon, perhaps as a hair accessory or to decorate something you are creating at home. Unfortunately the individual flake wrappers were not recyclable.
Finally, a better choice. The Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate Easter bunny was simply wrapped in foil. Aluminium foil is found a lot in packaging and the good news is that it’s recyclable!
We then looked at the smaller Easter eggs. Okay, there may be slightly less chocolate, but look – everything here can be recycled!!!
The same with this chocolate bar from Tony’s Chocolonely. Sometimes there’s actually more chocolate in the chocolate bars than there are in the eggs so check the grams of chocolate before you buy. You might just be buying the colourful packaging that is going straight into the recycling bin! This brand also has a very important mission. The reason why its chocolate bars are unequally divided is to represent the cocoa supply chain. A handful of chocolate giants profit from keeping the price of cocoa as low as possible. As a result, farmers are forced to live in poverty. And that leads to illegal child labour and modern slavery. Tony’s produces 100% slave free chocolate, and by raising awareness aims to make all chocolate 100% slave free. Find out more HERE
However, not all chocolate bars are good for the environment! Take a closer look at this bar of Cadbury’s dairy milk marvellous creations….
There are no markings to suggest that this wrapper can be recycled! This is really disappointing because if this goes into the general waste then it will probably end up in landfill and this is very bad for the environment.
Saving the best till last – buying your chocolate from the refill shop! Here you can take your own refillable bag, and choose what you want! There’s no waste here, just yummy chocolate mini eggs!
We hope you all had an eggstra special Easter and remember to make green choices when buying chocolate in the future!
