Columnist Martin Cooper talks about the environmental cost of Easter.

Easter - commercially known for hot cross buns, cards and most commonly chocolate eggs.

But how much waste does the Easter celebration create?

Around 80 million Easter eggs are bought in the UK every year - most of which come in some sort or plastic packaging and contain palm oil - one of the most environmentally damaging crops on the planet.

If all the Easter eggs bought in the UK alone were laid out in a line, they would stretch the entire length of The Great Wall of China!

According to Business Waste, a quarter of an Easter egg’s weight is the packaging – normally made from cardboard, plastic, and foil - creating more than 8,000 tonnes of waste in the UK each year.

Around 4,300 tonnes is card waste from the boxes and other packaging and 160 tonnes is foil packaging used to protect the chocolate.

And a study by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) found that the equivalent of 3.3 million plastic water bottles worth of plastic is used to package Easter eggs in the UK each year.

Not really a surprise there is so much waste when you consider only 38 per cent of an Easter egg box is chocolate – the rest is packaging and space!

According to a study by uSwitch in 2021, around 73 per cent of the UK’s top-selling Easter eggs contain palm oil, and we all know the devastating impact its production has on the environment - destroying habitats, killing wildlife and significantly reducing biodiversity in those areas it is farmed.

They also estimate that almost 98,000 tonnes of carbon emissions are released into the atmosphere at Easter - the equivalent of around 100 return flights from London to New York.

More than 288 billion litres of water used to produce Easter egg chocolate, according to uSwitch, taking 10,000 litres of water to make just 1kg of chocolate - the equivalent of 115,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Easter eggs account for around 10 per cent of the nation’s spending on chocolate every year, but despite our obsession with it, around eight million are uneaten and thrown away as food waste every Easter.

So how can we reduce our environmental impact this Easter?

Don't give an egg - choose a bar wrapped in recyclable packaging, buy chocolate that is ethically sourced and palm oil free and make sure you eat them to reduce food waste.