Green Your Easter Egg Hunt With Recycled Materials

Easter is a natural green event: on our calendars, it marks a season of springtime renewal and life, and the commercial images of the Easter bunny and eggs help reinforce that celebration. Why not go truly green this April with some green DIY projects straight from your recycling bin? Here are our suggestions for greening your Easter.

Zero Waste Easter Egg Garland

For those families eager to decorate their events, simply dive into the recycling bin, and you’ll find a plethora of paper options. From leftover construction paper to newspaper and cereal boxes, any can be used to make your paper egg shapes. Once you have all the eggs you need, grab some twine and close pegs. Cut your twine to the desired length and clip the eggs along it. Tie the garland to a suitable location, such as a staircase or patio railing. When the festivities are over, simply remove all the eggs (recycle them if you wish) and store the items till next year.

Easter Eggs

Everyone loves a good Easter egg hunt, but the environment can do without the thousands of plastic eggs forgotten or littered around parks and backyards for years to come. Forego the neon colored plastic eggs. Instead, try making your own from materials in your recycling bin: using old newspaper print, you can paper-mache some creative, reusable eggs that also biodegrade. If you love soft crafts, reusable eggs out of recycled felt are a great option, especially since using 100% wool will biodegrade when these eggs are lost in the yard.

If you love to boil and dye Easter eggs, you can also do this with recycled materials. Before you throw out your onion skins, beet or carrot peels, and more into your compost bin, you can turn them into your own DIY natural food coloring for your Easter eggs. To continue to reduce your environmental impact, dye organic, local eggs from your favorite farmer.

Easter Baskets and Grass

You don’t need to buy a fake plastic basket for Easter–instead, get creative with another paper mache project for some Easter baskets decorated with organic, non-toxic paint and recycled color tissue paper. In addition, you can pull out and decorate recycled cardboard boxes (cereal boxes and mailing boxes are great sizes), and attach string handles.  These baskets can be reused next year, or easily recycled back into the bin.

As an alternative to fake plastic grass typically put in Easter baskets (and then in trash bins), you can instead add grass made from shredded, recycled construction paper or colorful magazine paper. For a natural, real texture that is certainly green for the Earth, you can grow lots of wheatgrass to your fill baskets.