As many of us indulge ourselves with chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and other sweet and savoury treats over Easter we should keep in mind that it is becoming easier than ever to recycle packaging and leftovers.
Every Easter as well as buying around 80 million Easter eggs as a nation we throw away around 9,600 tonnes of cardboard waste, over 4,000 tonnes of plastic waste and 8,500 tonnes of food waste, including 8 million hot cross buns wasted, 19 million leftover potatoes and 8 million Easter eggs.
The good news most of this can be easily recycled either by putting packaging in your blue bin, reusing leftovers and putting food scraps and peels in your food recycling bin.
Here are some top tips to help you recycle more this Easter.
- Choose Easter eggs that come in recyclable packaging, without extra plastic windows or wrapping
- Most Easter egg packaging can go straight in your blue recycling bin. That includes cardboard boxes, plastic trays and the foil that eggs come wrapped in
- Easter leftovers can live again as a tasty new meal. There are some fantastic recipes on the Love Food Hate Waste and BBC Good Food websites
- Uneaten hot cross buns can be frozen for another day, the cardboard inner of your hot cross buns can go in the blue bin, while the plastic package can often be recycled at the supermarket
- There are lots of delicious ways to use up leftover chocolate from Easter eggs instead of throwing them away by following these Easter chocolate recipes from BBC Good Food
Don’t forget that there are no changes to waste collections this Easter. Our waste crews are working Good Friday and Easter Monday bank holidays, so please put your bins out as always.
Find out more about what waste goes in which bin on the What goes in your bins and A-Z of waste and items for recycling pages of our website.