Top tips for a Lil Easter

1. If you only read one, it’s this: when it comes to chocolate, it’s quality over quantity. You might buy fewer, and have to explain to wee ones, but the cocoa growers and their kids will thank you. So will the orangutans. So do we. <3

2.  Why the orangutans? Watch out for palm oil from unsustainable sources. It’s hiding in so much of the cheap choccie and hot cross buns. If it’s registered sustainable palm oil, it should be listed as such in the ingredients.

3.  For chocolate, fully traceable cocoa is best, followed by organic or a high percentage of mass balance Fairtrade. Any fair trade is better than 100% Unfairtrade.

4.  But it doesn’t have to all be about the chocolate, even when it comes to Easter “egg hunts”: make a Spring garden wildlife bingo hunt, or hide craft pieces to decorate Easter hats. Bake and hide Easter biscuits, cupcakes, hot cross buns.

5.  Check the packaging! Lots of Easter eggs come in cardboard and then there’s plastic inside. Some producers have heeded the consumers and done away with that plastic so reward them. Foil can be balled to the size of a large hen’s egg and put in kerbside metal recycling.

6. Hold a virtual bonnet/drawing/egg design/photography competition online with school friends and family. Send your creations to your grandparents or a local care home to cheer up those in isolation at this difficult time.

7.   Beware the “bargain”. Remember it’s unlikely to be the big retailers or the corporate traders absorbing that “great deal”.

8.  Can you swap the sweets for activities? Roll eggs, dye eggs, craft with eggs, press spring flowers (leave some for the bees!).

9. Celebrate the events of Spring - puffins return in late March/early April, spring flowers bloom, trees bud. You can record when you see these happening and contribute your data to the Woodland Trusts Nature’s Calendar project. Find out more here.

10. Most of all, enjoy time with your family - remotely or in person. x