Will you buy an Easter egg this year? About a quarter of the weight of some of the bestselling brands is packaging. Most Easter eggs are hollow inside, so much of the size of what we are buying is extravagantly packaged fresh air.
Packaging makes up an average 25 per cent of the total weight of the bestselling Easter eggs, a 2018 investigation by not-for-profit consumer group, Which? found. Comparing the top 10 best selling branded Easter eggs by weighing their packaging, it found some leave consumers with far more cardboard and plastic to dispose of than others.
The box, plastic and foil made up 36 per cent of the most packaged egg, according to Which? That was almost twice as much as the least packaged one. Indeed, the chocolate in the most packaged egg weighed 264g while its packaging weighed 152g.
This bulk means their transport is more costly for the environment too – you’ll fit a whole lot more flat chocolate bars in a refrigerated storage unit, a shipping container or a truck than you will a hollow Easter egg, boxed up.
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Go to any supermarket this week and you’ll see great walls of Easter eggs, stacked high in edifices of cardboard and foil. It’s no wonder Easter marks one of busiest times of the year for waste recovery operators in Ireland, according to Repak.
Those with children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews are likely the keenest purchasers of Easter eggs. About 27 per cent of Irish adults planned on buying between three and five chocolate eggs, according to Repak’s survey. A quarter of people said they planned to buy eight or more eggs, while 28 per cent said they would buy at least one for themselves.
The recipient will have no problem disposing of the tasty egg of course, and most Easter egg packaging now can be recycled, which is good news. You can put the cardboard boxes, plastic moulds, chocolate trays and tin foil in the recycling bin clean, dry and loose, says Repak.
Consumers pay on the double for the extravagant packaging of Easter eggs though, which ultimately adds to their bin charges. Irish residents recycled more than 62,000 tonnes of Easter egg packaging waste last year, Repak estimated. The per-lift charge for a recycling bin in Ireland is about €1.25.
As if the packaging-to-chocolate ratio wasn’t already totally out of whack, there’s more bad news for buyers of Easter eggs this year. Your chocolate egg could be smaller, and yet more expensive, according to Which?
A steep fall in global cocoa production has driven wholesale costs to record highs. To deal with this inflation, some manufacturers are cutting the size of their products. The result is popular Easter eggs from big-name brands have soared in price by up to 50 per cent, while some have shrunk in size.
For example, Which? found a Twix white chocolate Easter egg at Tesco increased from £5 (€5.88) to £6 (€7.05) in the run-up to Easter this year compared to last, but had also shrunk from 316g to 258g – a 47 per cent jump in the price per 100g, says Which?
If you are spending more to buy less chocolate, but with the same bulk of packaging, that sounds like a bad deal.
If you are buying an Easter egg this year, opt for ones packaged in recyclable materials like cardboard and foil. It’s often the more expensive brands that use more elaborate packaging with synthetic ribbons, plastic film and other paraphernalia.
Avoid eggs with plastic, difficult to put together toys, too – nobody really wants them, especially the parents of sugar-crazed kids. Their negative impact on the environment can be much greater than packaging. It’s the same for unnecessarily complicated egg hunt kits.
You could just opt for a ‘flat Easter egg’ this year – in other words, a chocolate bar. It could have more chocolate, with less packaging and at a cheaper price. Go for an ethically sourced, fair trade one if you can.
