Greening Easter Baskets: Rethinking Plastic and Junk Food Treats

 To fill three boxes, I cut a total of three sheets, in strips the width a bit skinnier than a pencil, and with the help of the creases of folding giving it a volumizing texture, it mimicked the qualities of the fake grass bedding better than I expected.

Do away with plastic eggs?

            Manufactures don’t make eggs out of recycled paper, ready to be filled with treats, do they? Even if they did, I’d probably not buy them. I’m thinking outside the egg. Reused tissue paper bundles tied with string and ribbon I have on hand does the job nicely. And if we want to hide the treats outside for a hunt and its dewy? Well, I’d just do it inside, and use only hardboiled eggs for the outdoor hunt part of the adventure. (As you might expect, I made natural dyes for the eggs for the first time this year: Lessons in Making Easter Egg Dyes.)

Alternative Treats

            Whether you’re motivated by a child’s allergy to food dyes made from petroleum, need to go grain-free or avoid genetically modified organisms in the corn syrup, soy and sugar likely present in virtually all candy offerings, or if you’re simply striving to set different nutritional standard, a candy-centered holiday like Easter may be quite a bee in your bonnet. How can you avoid these things and yet still give your kid a sense of sharing in the tradition he/she sees all around?

This part would be admittedly more challenging if I were restricted to the average grocery chain store where the only option for treats is the aisle of standard candy in bright wrappers: marshmallow peeps, chocolates, petroleum-based-dyed multi-colored Jelly beans, etc. But if you have access to bulk bins or, even better, bulk bins in a health food store, that’s alternative-treats heaven! (Another bonus to buying bulk items–skipping the petroleum-based individual wrappers.)

            My sons love going to what they call “the bin store,” so I had a pretty good idea of what to get them that would excite them as treats. I bought them bundles of standard fare for our house: nuts, granola, and dried fruits—except I got some of the more exotic ones I often buy sparingly due to cost. They also love coconut-rolled figs with an almond on top. (In fact my oldest was recently given an Almond Joy bite-sized candy bar by someone, and his comparison is that he thought it was just like one of those figs—he viewed the candy bar and the fig as interchangeable.)

But what I think will be the crowned jewel of their Easter treats basket will be the “Green Energy Cubes.” My kids don’t know what they’re called or what they’re made out of (carob, which is a chocolate substitute, rice, broccoli, dried fruit, almonds, spirulina), but they LOVE them. I hardly ever by them because they cost more per pound than whole cashews. Then I’ll probably finish off the baskets with some Annie’s cheddar bunnies—the shape fits the seasonal theme! 

So here’s to our first version of more healthful, more environmentally friendly Easter baskets. Who knows what future versions will be like!

Other articles of possible interest:

How Much Genetically Modified Food Do You Eat?

Power Your Electronics with Your Body’s Own Movement? The NPower PEG, The First Kinetic Energy         Recharger

Hormone-free Milk: Dairy Companies Pledging Not to Use Artificial Bovine Growth Hormone

Psychiatrist Treats Depression with Nutritional Supplements