Aldi Ireland, a unit of German supermarket chain Aldi (Essen; www.aldi.de), said it was replacing plastic packaging on one of their top-selling Easter egg chocolates with cardboard and foil, thereby slashing by 94% the plastic packaging on the product.

The remaining 6% represents the foil used to wrap the sweets, which as a soft plastic can be fully recycled through households’ regular domestic recycling bin, it added. Aldi has set a goal to make all packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025.

Related: Demand in European consumption of food and drink packaging to rise 1.65%/y to 2028

On the confectionery front, Cadbury Australia (www.cadbury.com.au), a unit of Mondelez International (Chicago, Illinois, USA; www.mondelezinternational.com) announced it was replacing the old plastic packaging for a favourite, Easter egg chocolate brand with new cardboard cartons. The new look would save 131,000 kg of plastics for the product in Australia and New Zealand, the company adds.

It said it would also remove the plastic blister and excess cardboard in some of the Easter gift boxes sold in the two countries, reducing more than 200,000 kg of packaging material. The moves are in line with Cadbury’s target to cut by at least a quarter virgin plastics use in its rigid plastic packaging, or a 5% reduction in virgin plastics use in the overall plastic packaging, assuming a constant portfolio mix, by 2025.

Cadbury recently announced it would use around 50% of recycled plastics for the wrappers across its blocks, bars, and pieces produced in Australia from Q1 2024 onward. Earlier this year, it signed a deal with packaging manufacturer Amcor to source around 1,000 t of post-consumer recycled plastics to wrap its core Cadbury chocolate range.

Related: Amcor FY sales up slightly on higher prices

Cadbury’s partnership with Amcor involves investing in Licella Holdings (Sydney, Australia; www.licella.com) to fund the construction of one of the first soft plastics advanced recycling facilities in Australia. The facility in Melbourne is scheduled for completion in 2025 and will initially process around 20,000 t/y of end-of-life plastic, with plans to scale up to around 120,000 t/y. 

The latest initiatives from Cadbury and Aldi come amid growing consumer perception of the need to slash packaging waste, which in the EU alone rose by 16.4 mn t (24.2%) from 2010 to 2021, according to data from European statistics office Eurostat (Luxembourg; www.ec.europa.eu/eurostat).

According to the GWP Group (www.gwp.co.uk), a UK-based packaging designer and manufacturer, estimates suggest that around 80-90 million chocolate eggs are eaten annually in the UK, with consumers likely to spend GBP 415 mn (EUR 463 mn) on Easter eggs in 2024. It said almost 59% of British adults thought that Easter eggs are over-packaged and that brands should take steps to shrink packaging, with the sentiment stronger in Europe. 

In Australia, Nestlé (Vevey, Australia; www.nestle.com) said research in 2022 revealed that although half (54%) of Aussies are looking for less Easter packaging, just 5% of them consider the amount of packaging waste as an important factor when purchasing Easter eggs.

Related: Nestlé to invest EUR 7.9 mn in building UK plastics recycling plant

Nestlé said that nearly half of respondents (49%) were drawn to the biggest Easter egg box, but a careful look at the shelves shows that bigger packaging doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger sized egg. 

Nestlé, which is shaking up the bigger-is-more perception by hatching a new Easter range packed without hard plastics, has already unveiled a new array of some of its Easter favourites that eliminated the need for the traditional, rigid plastic used in many Easter egg boxes. They are also all packed in a 100% recyclable box, Nestlé said.