Going green: Easter celebrations with eco-friendly money-saving tips Bedford News

last article by Angela Terry

Angela Terry, green activist and consumer expert, separates climate change fact from fiction and explains here how you can take simple, practical steps to help save the planet. Follow @ouronehome and visit https://onehome.org.uk/ for more advice.

You’ll have just as much fun – and you’ll save money!

When buying chocolate eggs, take a good look at the packaging.

Try to avoid eggs or hard plastic toys. Some companies have made an effort to make their packaging more environmentally friendly, such as the British brand Montezuma.

Even its glues and tape are durable.

As for content, try to opt for Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance certified chocolate, as the cocoa is grown using methods that do not cause deforestation.

See the Fairtrade website for more information.

Value-for-money options include Aldi’s Choco Changer Salted Caramel Egg (£3.99), Lidl’s Premium Deluxe Salted Caramel Egg (£3.99) and the irresistible Fair Egg The Co-op’s Trade Hot Cross Bun (£6).

Also watch out for the very first vegan and ultra-ecological creamed egg!

Made with oat milk, it costs £5 for five eggs from Mummy Meegz, a small business founded by a 74-year-old Yorkshire cafe owner.

Spring lambs are super cute and many people think they are super tasty too.

But could you do without meat for your Easter Sunday lunch?

This would significantly reduce the carbon footprint of your meal and save you money!

The BBC has a wide range of meatless main course recipes online for Easter lunch, including spring vegetable casserole with herb dumplings.

If you really want to green up your lunch, you can make it plant-based.

The Veganuary website has some great Easter recipes, including shepherd’s pie and hot rolls.

Organizing an eco-friendly Easter egg hunt is all about being clever.

If you want to use real eggs, try buying them from a local farmer and coloring them with natural dyes, so you can compost the shells or put them in your food waste bin.

Many websites have information on making dyes from kitchen scraps, such as cabbage tops, onion skins, and beet peelings, including Martha Stewart’s. It’s a great holiday activity with the kids!

If you prefer to use reusable “eggs” that you can fill with chocolate candies, try avoiding plastic ones. Now you can buy hollow wooden eggs, which kids can paint and reuse next year. Etsy is a good place to find such things.

As the weather improves, it’s time to take your family to the countryside. Turn off those game consoles, smartphones and computers and go for a long walk. It’s free and great for everyone’s health and well-being.

Feargal Sharkey once sang Teenage Kicks.

These days, he’s more concerned about sewage spills.

President of the oldest fly fishing club in England, this 63-year-old man campaigns against the pollution of rivers by farms and water companies. He has a battle on his hands.

Every English river is polluted. In Wales, 56% of rivers do not meet standards.

In Scotland, conservationists talk of introducing a river ‘sewage police’. More than seven million tonnes of sewage flow into Sharkey’s waterways in Northern Ireland every year.

Replace milk milk with oat milk.

In terms of greenhouse gases, 200 milliliters of a glass of cow’s milk creates about 0.6 kg of carbon dioxide.

The same amount of oat milk produces 0.18 kg. The carbon footprint of a dairy latte is more than three times larger.

The UK generates 222.2 million tonnes of waste each year.

Everything has to go somewhere.

How much of our waste is recycled?

Not as much as it should be!

The household recycling rate in England is 43.8%, meaning it missed its target of 50% by 2020.

In Scotland, the 2020 target was 60%, but rates are currently at 42%.

Northern Ireland have managed to reach their 50% rate in 2020 – but the limelight goes to the Welsh.

They set the highest target of 64% and exceeded it by 1%.

For the UK as a whole, this means around half of our waste still goes to landfill or incinerator.

As for the half that’s supposed to be recycled, what happens to it isn’t as simple as one might hope.Plastic

From the UK, we send more than three and a half Olympic size swimming pools of plastic waste to other countries every day.

A Greenpeace survey has shown that more than half of the plastic the UK government says is recycled actually ends up overseas.

We don’t know what happens then, because there are no controls in place.

The destination of our old plastic has changed many times – as countries grow tired of taking other people’s waste. For example, until 2017, China collected most of the world’s plastic waste, but then banned such imports.

Currently, we send about half of our plastic “recycling” to Turkey and Malaysia.Paper

Recycling is an integral part of modern paper production.

Around 80% of the paper made in the UK uses paper recovered from household waste.

However, as more and more people recycle, the number of paper mills in the UK has decreased, meaning the amount of waste paper sent overseas has increased.

More than half of the paper collected for recycling in the UK is now reprocessed overseas.Glass and metals

Glass is 100% recyclable.

Its green credentials are fantastic.

Beverage cans and aluminum tin cans can also be melted down and made into new things.

For these materials, much of the recycling is done in the UK.

First of all, don’t stop recycling!

But try to see it as a last resort.

Make your mantra ‘reduce and reuse’. Try to avoid single-use plastics as much as possible.

Buy fruits and vegetables in bulk. Bring a reusable bag. Buy from local stores when you can instead of the internet.

Look online for zero waste living ideas.

Lawn is good for the environment.

Better than concrete or plastic grass, but not ideal for essential insects and wildlife. Diversity is key to healthy ecosystems, so let a corner of your garden go wild. You will have less mowing!

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