Have an egg-cellent, waste-free Easter

If you’re planning on indulging in your favourite treats and sharing this time with family and loved ones, we want to ensure we help you waste as little as possible by recycling as much as you can and avoiding food waste.

Both campaigns have published tips to make sure you have a splendid Easter, that is also very kind to our planet. Details can be found – Seven ways to recycle at Easter | Recycle Now and What to do with your Easter leftovers | Love Food Hate Waste

 

Top tips include:

• Easter egg foil: The foil wrapped around most easter eggs CAN be recycled - Simply scrunch the foil into a loose ball along with any other bits of used foil (including from smaller eggs) and pop it into your normal recycling bin for collection. If it springs back open when you try to scrunch it, this means it’s laminated and should go in your general rubbish bin.
• Easter egg packaging: Easter eggs with less packaging are much better for the planet and luckily there is much more around these days. Most of the packaging can be popped in your kerbside collections - cardboard boxes and possibly some plastic trays, which need to be flattened them to save space.
• Flowers: Once your flowers have past their best you can pop them in with your garden waste or if you have a home compost, they can go on there. If you are feeling creative, you can dry them and use them around your home.
• Plastic Wrapping / Wrapping Paper: If your Easter treats have come in cellophane wrapping this is not widely recycled at kerbside – you can check the Recycling Locator to see if your council accepts it. Over 6,000 supermarkets across the UK now accept plastics bags and wrapping, which you can take this type of plastic to for recycling. For any wrapping paper, as long as it’s not foil or covered in glitter, and passes the ‘scrunch test’, it can be recycled at your kerbside.
• Food waste: Each year in the UK, approximately 6.6 million tonnes of food go to waste from our homes over the twelve months. So, if you are planning a sumptuous Easter feast do not forget about your freezer! Utilising your freezer acts like a pause button, giving you more time to eat it and saving it from the bin. Not only does it lock in freshness and preserve quality and flavour, but it’s also perfectly safe providing it’s defrosted correctly. Your food won’t deteriorate in the freezer, and most bacteria can’t grow in it, so it’s a great way to buy yourself extra time and save delicious food for later!

Love Food Hate Waste has some excellent tips on the best ways to prevent food waste.

• Foods and recipes | Love Food Hate Waste

 

Useful links:

• What do all the SYMBOLS on your packaging actually mean – and which ones should you take heed of? https://www.recyclenow.com/how-to-recycle/understanding-recycling-symbols
• Recycle Now definitive list of our A-Z of what can/can’t be recycled: https://www.recyclenow.com/recycle-an-item the postcode locator (on the Recycle Now homepage) can also tell you what each local authority does with any of those items, from London to Llanfairfechan.
• Freezer guidance: Seven foods you never knew you could freeze | Love Food Hate Waste