How To Green Up Your Easter This Year

by Melody Thacker, in How To (No Comments)

Before we know it the Easter bunny will be hopping down the bunny trail leaving a swath of plastic Easter grass and dozens of plastic eggs in his wake. Does it make the environmentalist in you cringe? Don’t be hopping mad, here are some ways to make Easter green without festooning the planet with fake grass!

1. Instead of a basket filled with plastic, cheap chocolate and sugary treats give your child a decorative cloth bag with a set of child’s garden tools, seeds, and/or other gardening supplies. A nature kit or science kit are other alternatives.

2. Make your own Easter basket from materials around the house, choose eco-friendly materials, such as hemp or jute. Or purchase hand-made, fair trade certified baskets that you can reuse each year or find other uses for after Easter.

3. Fill your children’s Easter baskets with enduring wooden toys (such as puzzles, trains, or cars), pocket-sized board games, a deck of cards, dominoes, etc. Take your child’s personality into consideration rather than just giving the “usual” stuffed bunny and plastic trinkets. Then you can build a basket theme around your child’s interests.

4. Fill the baskets with biodegradable material that can be composted, such as natural straw, hay, moss, or simply grass from outside. You can also shred up the Sunday funnies or colorful scrap paper, catalogues and magazines.

5. Homemade always tastes best and you know exactly what’s in it. Bake your own treats for the basket, special cookies, cupcakes, and candies. Children love to help bake and decorate so it can be a fun family project too.

6. Re-use what you have. Do you already have baskets and plastic eggs from last year, from well-intentioned family or friends, or your children’s school projects? Fill them with homemade treats or use them for decorating.

7. For your Easter dinner, serve eco-friendly meats such as organic ham and free-range turkey. Serve vegetables from local farmers or from the wild – cooked dandelion greens are an early spring tradition that goes back many years.

8. Dye easter eggs using natural dyes, simply mix a tablespoon of white vinegar per cup of boiling water and add onion skins (yellow), red cabbage (light purple), shredded raw beets (deep red), spinach (light green), coffee grounds or tea (brown), etc.

9. Use free-range eggs or, better yet, obtain your eggs from a local farmer or urban chicken-keeper. If the eggs are brown, you can use eco-friendly paints on them instead of dyes.

I hope all of these ideas will help you reduce waste and save money this Easter season. Do you have tips and ideas? Please share in the comments, we’d love it if you do!