Europe – UK residents spent a little shy of 900 million pounds on gifts, food and decorations for Easter this year. This notable rise in the holiday’s popularity also generates an impresssive amount of waste, a lot of which is recyclable packaging.
The springtime festivities generate some 1000 tonnes of recyclable materials annually in Ireland alone, where people typically consume no less than 17 million chocolate eggs. As waste management collection schemes will tell you, a big portion of the product, by weight, consists of packaging: aluminium foil, plastics, cardboard, multi-layer gift boxes, etc.
A recent survey by marketing firm Which? Points out that the best-selling chocolate eggs by Thorntons make up almost 37% of the product’s weight.
‘Unnecessary packaging is a big environmental issue and we need to see manufacturers doing more to reduce it,’ comments Anthony Muleady, Chairman of the Irish Waste Management Association.
Rather than automatically tossing the abundant candy wrappers into the bin to be rid of them, Muleady stresses the importance of separating at source any material that is relatively clean.
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