Easter landfill

It's Easter, so what better way to start our blog than with a few Easter treats?

We're encouraged to celebrate Easter by buying hollow chocolate eggs, lovingly enclosed in moulded plastic and glossy coated cardboard. That's a lot of landfill. Here are some examples from a Co-op supermarket:

Here's a classic Cadbury Dary Milk egg, wrapped in foil, with moulded plastic glued to glossy coated cardboard. Even the most committed recycler would struggle to separate these materials!

How about the packaging of this Thornton's Classic? The two tiers give a real sense of space, the egg enjoying panoramic views from it's gold-backed penthouse throne, while the lower-tier chocolates sit in individually-moulded trays.

This imposing creation from Lindt offers a classic example of Triple Packaging. Those chocolates in the lower tier are individually-wrapped, sitting in a cardboard and plastic Lindt chocolate box, which itself is enclosed in the towering Easter egg package. Nice!

The more world-conscious of us might prefer this Co-op Fairtrade egg, which boasts of '68% Fairtrade ingredients'. I wonder whether the oil that was used to make all the plastic was Fairtrade?

Happy Easter one and all, and remember, you're the customer, the power is yours. If you don't want to buy all this packaging, don't buy the goods!

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