Packaging? Pack it in

As an adult, it’s easy to forget how amazing Easter was as a kid. Yeah, you get a few weeks off school and the weather was normally nice enough to play out, but the true joy of Easter was receiving more chocolate than one knew what to do with.

Obviously as a grown up I can buy chocolate whenever I want so it is slightly less exciting but there’s still something special about the abundance of crème eggs in shops and the way that thinner chocolate just tastes so good.

The issue we have, moving into an age where people are increasingly aware of their own impact on the environment, is the hugely unnecessary packaging. A recent study found that a quarter of the weight of most Easter eggs was packaging. The large Thorntons egg (bit classy for me) is nearly 40% packaging – that’s nearly as bad as those individual oranges you see with plastic around them! We have to do more as a society to enjoy chocolate for one day a year without creating so much waste!

In the UK we produce about 11.5 million tonnes of packaging waste every year, and despite the government’s future plans for plastic free aisles and more encouragement than ever to recycle – manufacturer’s need to do better, as do we. If you’re not recycling your cardboard, foil or plastic this Easter – what on earth is wrong with you!

Anyway – I see this as an excuse to buy (myself) a few Cadbury’s Twirl eggs next week as they contain the least packaging (under 20%) and I can pretty much guarantee 0% chocolate wastage, so…

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