How do you buy yours?

Naked or with packaging?

Bright, colourful and tasty Easter Eggs are back on the shelves ready for us to buy. Whether you’re buying one egg or ten, why not challenge yourself to take home as little packaging as you can this year?

Over the last two years, the companies producing Easter Eggs have faced a lot of pressure to reduce the amount of packaging around their delicious chocolate eggs. Many companies including Nestle UK, Mars, Cadbury, Kinnerton and Thornton’s have reduced the amount of plastic and cardboard around their products.

In 2009 59% of adults felt Easter Eggs were over-packaged. In response the manufacturers reduced the amount of cardboard and plastic used. Sainsbury’s reduced the packaging on its Taste the Difference eggs by 55% and Mars reduced the weight of cardboard by 43%.

Our package-less league

We took a trip to a supermarket to see what we could find with little or no packaging. Here are our favourites in the package-less league.

Reusable eggs

Cardboard eggs can be refilled with chocolate year after year. Brightly decorated and distinctive, you can use them to give other Easter gifts and because they’re sturdy you can hide them around your home and garden in places the larger square boxes wouldn’t fit. If you don’t want them anymore give them to someone else or recycle them with your other cardboard if they’re damaged.

Eggs wrapped only in foil

There are lots of eggs that are only wrapped in brightly coloured foil without plastic or cardboard. These can be small eggs with a tasty filling or those with a toy surprise inside. You could also buy large eggs such as the Eggheads (pictured in the reusable eggs) or larger ones from Cadburys. When the eggs have been eaten, recycle the foil with your tins and cans.

We found that a lot of the large eggs wrapped only in foil had been broken in the shop – which was disappointing and shows that sometimes packaging can be helpful. We were able to get our eggs home from the shop in one piece though!

No plastic

There are lots of eggs which come in cardboard boxed with no plastic insert. Some of the packaging proudly says how much less packaging there is around this Easter Egg. There are lots of Easter Egg companies that no longer put plastic around the eggs inside the cardboard boxes, including Cadbury and Nestle.

Alternative Easter gifts

If you want to give a different Easter gift, you could give chocolate bars wrapped in foil and paper which can be recycled after eating, or maybe give a book or gift voucher. For more gift ideas with no packaging check out our alternative gifts page.

What do you think about Easter Egg packaging? Tell us your thoughts and send us pictures of any eggs you think are overpackaged.