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With Easter quickly upon us, I have a few suggestion to make this holiday more eco friendly.
- Buy a basket or a bucket (when I was a kids, we had large pastel buckets) that can be used year after year. If you have received any gift baskets during the year, you can repurpose those for an Easter basket with ribbon and/or scarves.
- Do not get that plastic “grass” you buy in the stores. It is messy. It is bad for your pets. It’s not all that great for the environment either. You can easily make your own by shredding your newspaper (aka repurposing it) or you can even buy paper grass. I do recommend that everyone has read the paper first before you shred it. You can even grow your own grass for your Easter basket!
- Instead of buying the tablets you drop into vinegar, you can dye your eggs using natural items. For pink and/or red, you can use cranberry juice, pomegranate seeds, beets, raspberries, or red onion skins. Saffron or tumeric will create a yellow dye. Blueberries can be used for blue. Yellow onion skins will create a great orange hue. Red wine makes a great shade of purple.
- If dyeing eggs is just too much of a mess, you can just get the markers and crayons out and let your kids decorate their eggs with that. (Don’t tell anybody, but we’ve done that at Halloween with our pumpkins.)
- In my house, I’m afraid to hide the eggs we color due to forgetting where we hide some of the eggs. Instead, we use plastic eggs for hiding purposes. Every year I use the same eggs (my daughter is 7, and we are still on our original bag!). Instead of loading these eggs with candy (which they get enough of from school), consider filling them with colorful erasers, sparkly paper clips, hair ribbons, magnets, money, small games, and anything else you can find that is fun that will fit.
- Add a plant your kids can plant in the yard in their baskets.
- If possible, put organic chocolate eggs and jelly beans in their baskets.
How are you making this Easter more eco friendly for your kids? Are you reusing or recycling anything?
For more eco friendly tips, visit our Green Tips section.
Wow! I’d never considered using other ingredients to dye eggs with. Great idea! Now, if only I had time to dye eggs. Haha!
We usually end up doing them Saturday afternoon. LOL Which reminds me — I need to go make some hard boiled eggs!
My mom uses decorative pails and puts a bag of cotton balls in the bottom for the “grass”….I always know I’ll get cotton bass for Easter.
Hate the plastic grass too. Do you know that you can get baskets at thrift stores during the year for under a dollar? They’re in great condition and can be reused every year.
We use the shredded cardboard type of grass that afterwards gets recycled. Love your other tips too. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter.
ok so i’m late with the comment but you could use dot to dot markers (bingo dabbers) to color your eggs. much less mess. also, shred construction paper!
What excellent tips.
The plastic grass… I can not stand it. And this year my husband would not let it go… so we bought two pkgs to divide into 5 baksets… I filled the baskets while he slept and the grass is still in the pkgs.
If you wait until the season is over, you can get easter buckets for 50-75% off and save them for next year and every year after.