Hippyshopper's Ethical Easter Egg Guide: heroes and villains
With Easter now a month away, we're already seeing our favourite products swept off the supermarket shelves to make way for mounds of plastic and cardboard packaging, as the giant eggs take over. What can you do to avoid being part of this yearly festival of packaging? So what have the nation's chocolate factories done to improve matters? Here's a quick rundown of the best and worst on the market.
It might be aimed at kids, but Dubble is definitely my chocolate egg of choice for 2008. For those of us who choose the sweet, simple stuff over ponciness when it comes to chocolate, Dubble bars are choccie heaven, and the eggs do not disappoint. What's more, the chocolate is fairly traded and the box has the best and most recyclable combination of foil-wrapped egg in cardboard, sans plastic. £3.50 at Natural Collection.
Cadbury's has done itself few favours among greens with the decision to remove cardboard from its egg boxes, which will still be encased in plastic. This lowers the company's over-all carbon quota, but perhaps does so in the least meaningful way, since consumers are far less likely to recycle plastic than card. Greenwash? It seems a fair observation. Still, dispose of the plastic responsibly, and you can still enjoy a Mini Eggs, Dairy Milk or Caramel easter egg in eco-friendly bliss, though the chocolate still isn't fairtrade.
Organic pioneers Green and Blacks has come up trumps on the chocolate front, as usual, so depending on whether you're bothered about the fact that G&B is now owned by Cadbury-Schwepps, you might want to explore the exciting array of eggs it's brought out this year, with some of its top flavours turned egg-shaped: there's dark chocolate with Maya Gold orange, milk, dark or white chocolate to choose from, all made from 100% certified organic ingredients. Packaging is foil-wrapped egg in cardboard box. £3.99 at A Lot of Chocolate
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Chocolate Empire are a little known but really tasty maker of handmade organic chocolate, whose products come from 'single origin' milk. I'm not sure if that means from the same cow or simply the same herd, but I like to imagine it's the former! There's an interesting range of egg flavours here too: Early Grey tea, orange cognac, peppermint and coffee. £8.93 from Goodness Direct
For those who enjoy a bit of posh choc in their lives, Booja Booja - makers of organic truffles par excellence, have a treat for you in the shape of an...um...egg. The Around Midnight truffle egg scores extra points for being Dairy Free, Gluten Free, Organic, Vegan AND Wheat Free. £6.80 from Goodness Direct.
Finally, you could always go for the time-honoured option of a scrumptious, free-range egg with soldiers; a long-forgotten breakfast indulgence for many of us, which will get your easter off to a good healthy start. Children can have a lot of fun painting their (hard boiled or 'sucked') eggs - remember the school easter egg contest? See here for some fun ideas.
