How to Have an Eco-Friendly Easter

Plastic eggs, plastic toys, and plastic grass..Oh my! Easter can be full of waste and trash. But if you’re reading this, perhaps you want to see a change.  You want some new ideas for Easter that are good for you and your family along with the environment.  Plus, some of these are great for your pocketbook too as buying sustainable makes us more aware of our purchases, means toys will last and not break after being played with once, and we tend to not over buy.  Because friend, if we become more aware of what we’re buying our kids will learn to love and appreciate what we get them more too!

Tips to Find Eco-Friendly Things

We should all be looking at the 5-R’s when we’re determining if we need something.  Yup, gone are the days of just having the 3-R’s! Now we have refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose, & recycle, in that order.  What this means is that before we purpose anything, we should first think:

1. Refuse: Do we actually need it? Why are we purchasing this? Is this good for my health or the environment (think cleaners)?
2. Reduce: Can you use less? What is the minimum you need of this?
3. Reuse: Do you have something you could use instead? For example, instead of disposable plastic bags, could you use beeswax bags instead? Or a glass container instead of a plastic one? Or, reuse wrappings from a different present or package?
4. Repurpose: Is there something you own you could make work for this? Can you fix the shirt or make a new article of clothing out of it?
5. Recycle: As a last resort, recycle it.  Look for places that take textiles (yes, even stained ones!), compost food wastes, and dispose of electronics and batteries at designated places.  This is becoming more popular and even places like Target have a place to dispose of batteries now.

What to Do Instead of Plastic

When you go through a store before Easter, you’ll see individually wrapped candies, plastic buckets, plastic eggs, little plastic toys…are you seeing a trend here? Lots and lots of plastic that will stay on the earth well past our dying days and cause you headache as you step on them in the middle of the night. So what’s a family to do?

• Buy wooden toys
  • Grimm’s rainbow
  • Wobble boards
  • Trains, cars
  • Pickler ladders
  • Kitchens
  • Farm and farm animals
  • Blocks
  • If you go on Etsy you can also support someone’s little shop, but the price maybe a little more. Bella Luna Toys and Coco Village are two shops I’ve also shopped at for toys.
• Buy a basket that can be used over and over again
  • I bought Bolga baskets at a vendor at the PX. Bella Lune Toys also has them on their site.
  • The girls use them while playing all year round. We’ve had them for three years now and they’re still going strong!
• Shred up newspaper or dye a silk scarf green for the basket grass
  • Those little strands plastic grass are a pain to get out of your house once they’re spread everywhere. Not to mention they can pollute water ways and our Earth! We made our own kool aid dyed silks one year we use as grass (who said grass has to be green!?)
• Kid-friendly tools
  • Crinkle Cutter (as pictured above)
  • Kid sized broom, mop, duster, and dust pan that are all plastic free. 
  • I also found little metal shovels in Germany so they can help me garden.  It helps them learn some great skills through play too!
• Make them treats you know they’ll love
  • Homemade snacks
    • date balls, black bean brownies, dehydrated fruit
  • Fruit
  • Beef Jerky
  • This helps you prevent throwing out wrappings from individual candies and make healthier food choices too! 
• Buy wooden eggs to reuse year after year or paper mâché blown egg shells
  • Naturally dying eggs with things you have around your kitchen is a fun and toxin free way to enjoy Easter eggs (read my how to here)
  • We still have some of our paper mâchéed eggs, although some have been crushed.  But the good thing is, when they get crushed in play, the paper keeps it all together so you don’t have egg shells everywhere.

 

Make sure to pin this to save it for later!

Need some Easter present ideas that won’t leave you throwing money in the trash? Check out my post from last year!

Now it’s your turn! Share with me some of your favorite eco-friendly gifts or what you plan to do instead this year!