Easter means Easter eggs. But increasingly Easter eggs mean Easter trauma in our household.
First they plug straight into the tragedy of global warming. These days even the smallest egg consumes enough resources to melt a polar ice cap with their wanton use of packaging materials. You know the drill: encase egg in foil; insert wrapped egg into suit of protective plastic armour; protect protective armour with cardboard cage.
And then there are the even greater surgical tragedies that ensue when you try to open the bloody thing. Try to claw it open it with your hands and all you get is broken nails and lacerated finger tips. So move onto heavier ordnance. A screwdriver perhaps?. No it’s too thick to get into the gaps. Time for the ever faithful Stanley knife.
So you end up slashing wildly at the egg, probably wounding yourself and several small children in the process.
And what do you get? Chocolate smithereens. Which is what all that packaging was supposed to protect against in the first place.
So it is on behalf of the planet, small children and A&E departments everywhere, that I say thank you to Nestle which this year has replaced the plastic armour on its eggs with a nice, simple, biodegradeable cardboard basket.
They’ve had to get rid of the flimsy flirty peep-hole packaging that allowed the eggs to stand out on shelf . In its place they’ve introduced a protective veener they call a ‘cardboard box’ in the packaging industry.
Inside that sits the cardboard basket with wicker design.
So now all you do when you want an egg is open it, revealing two intact and enticing chocolate halves, eat it, then recycle the aluminium foil wrapping and carboard box. You wont have so much as a scar to show for it.
It’s a small but perfectly formed model of how corporations can act responsibly while increasing consumer satisfaction and making themselves look good in the process.
