Make Recycling Part of Your Easter Celebrations

With Easter Sunday fast approaching on 5 April, the traditions of easter eggs, hot cross buns, gifts and family gatherings come to the fore. While Easter often heralds positive things like the start of Spring, brighter weather and chocolate eggs, it has also become an annual milestone for increased waste, with an estimated 123 million eggs consumed last easter in the UK! And with increased consumption comes increased packaging with an additional 9,600 tonnes of cardboard and 4,000 tonnes of plastic waste produced.

So, here are a few tips to turn that waste into recycling, ensuring you have an environmentally friendly Easter (if not a calorie friendly one!)

Easter Eggs – The tradition of eggs symbolising Easter goes back 100s of years, but these days it’s very much focused on chocolate eggs, with products appearing in supermarkets weeks before the big day. With the eggs being hollow, manufacturers have needed to ‘encase’ them in large amounts of packaging to avoid damage. The good news is that this excess packaging can largely be recycled.

Increasingly manufacturers are using recycled material for their packaging, so the first step is to try and purchase eggs that don’t use virgin material. Once the egg is devoured, the cardboard boxes as well as the plastic trays the eggs come in can both go into kerbside recycling for collection.

Many eggs also come wrapped in foil to ensure freshness. There is some uncertainty whether this is recyclable or not – the good news is that vast majority is. Simply scrunch the foil into a ball and pop it in with your recycling. If, when scrunched, the foil bounces back into shape this indicates that the foil is laminated and is not suitable to go in your recycling and should go in the general waste.

Easter food and drink – Hot cross buns usually come in a cardboard tray and wrapped in plastic wrapping. The cardboard tray (minus sticky bits) can go in the recycling, but the plastic wrapping unfortunately cannot. Many supermarkets now operate a collection point for this type of wrapping as well as plastic bags. To find out the nearest collection to you visit: https://www.recyclenow.com/how-to-recycle/recycle-plastic-bags-and-wrapping

Easter is also a time for family gatherings, often involving food and drink, with an estimated 8,500 tonnes of food waste being created. Any leftovers can go straight into the food caddy, and glass and plastic drinks bottles, as well as cans, can go into the kerbside recycling.

Easter gifts – With the onset of Spring, many people with give and receive flowers over easter, especially daffodils which will be at their peak. When past their best, small amounts of flowers can go in the food caddy, but large flowers, leaves and stalks are best off in garden waste. The cellophane wrapping that flowers often come in cannot be recycled, and should be taken to supermarket collection points, along with plastic sweet wrappers.

Check your collection dates: Easter also often brings changes to waste and recycling collections, so try and get ahead of the game, check your collection dates and plan accordingly.

Give your packaging a new beginning – with Easter symbolising re-birth, make sure you give your packaging a chance to live again by recycling so it can be turned into something new.

 

From all of us at Casepak, we wish you a very happy Easter!