Easter eggs are in the shops already; the supermarket I work in has a whole aisle devoted to them and I'm sure that extra packaging has been used just to annoy me.

This is quite a tricky issue, no-one wants to suggest that children shouldn't enjoy receiving their easter eggs, I for one used to get quite excitied about it, but this shouldn't be an excuse to ignore the fact that unacceptable levels of packaging are used for many chocolate eggs.

What can we do?

There are options for "greens" to minimise their impact at easter time and still give easter eggs to friends. One suggestion is to buy chocolate bunnies etc. that are just wrapped in foil, even this foil can be recycled and it creates far less waste then the egg covered in foil, inside a plastic mould, inside four layers of cardboard.

Some eggs, however, don't have as much packaging as many others. I've noticed that there are a number of cadbury's eggs that don't use too much packaging - just a simple box and foil. I've also noticed that many eggs that use a plastic mould don't now use foil as well, so it seems that manufacturers are paying some attention to this issue. In fact, I read that overpackaging of easter eggs is the largest cause for complaint about any product in most supermarkets.

Sainsbury's have made announcements the last three years in a row that the packaging on their own brand of eggs has been dramatically reduced each year, so it would be worth checking these out. However, I have noticed that the eggs that are presumably branded as "high class" continue to use a ridiculous amount of packaging with massive boxes that hardly fit on the shelf but less chocolate in them than a regular large bar of chocolate.

For chocoholics that like to be environmentally friendly the good news is that a huge bar of chocolate is better value for money, has more chocolate and has far less packaging than an easter egg - so no need to get involved with wasteful eggs to get a chocolate "fix".

Inevitably, people will buy easter eggs, particularly if they have children; one of the best things you can do if you are buying an egg is to make your opinion known to the store manager about the level of packaging used and request that they reduce this next year. If enough people voice their opinion in this way, large retailers will make changes.

Of course, having eaten the egg, please recycle the packaging. The plastic mould and the foil is recycleable for most local authorities and if you are in an area where cardboard is not collected for recycling take it back to the store you bought it in and ask them to put it in their baler. The contents of which are sent for recycling.

Remember, not only is all that packaging bad for the environment, but the shop is probably making more money selling you the box, plastic and foil than they are from selling the chocolate.

Maybe I'll set up a shop that sells useless peices of plastic and cardboard next easter, there seems to be plenty of people who want to buy them!

Working in a supermarket drives me mental! Not only is the work sensationally dull, but the amount of waste created makes me mad. It's very stressful.

I don't believe it!

One box this evening was particulaly irritating. It was about 50cm square by about 40 cm high and made of some of the thickest, densest cardboard I've ever encountered. Inside was a myriad of folded cardboard seperating just four frying pans from each other, apparently to ensure that they didn't get scratched. However, it would appear that these frying pans were particularly prone to damage as they were also covered in a layer of plastic and each had a collar of cardboard around the neck, for what purpose I don't know. The amount of packaging that these frying pans require would make you think they were made of particularly fragile glass, not stainless steel. I weighed the resultant mess at 1.25 kilos; how ridiculous, all this rubbish just for four frying pans which once upon the hanger were free to smash into each other anyway!

What really gets on my nerves about all this is that not only is the cost of all this crap passed on to the consumer, eliminating nearly all of it would have almost no effect upon our lives whatsoever, whereas the benefits to the environment are great, both in terms of reduced rubbish to dispose of, but in terms of reducing the CO2 emissions created in the manufacture of such useless items.

I get so annoyed at the UK government waffling on about sticking so-called "green taxes" on travel to stop us polluting in aspects of our lives that would effect us to quite a large degree, when they could tax wasteful amounts of packaging out of existence and achieve similar reductions in CO2 emissions with very little effect on our lives. Not that I'm against encouraging people to think more before taking flights that are often not needed, just that there are so many other ways in which the government could cut CO2 emissions by providing real leadership instead of relying on crisis management taxation which imposes restrictions upon freedom of travel.

Of course, people shouldn't have the right to frivolously go careering around in planes contributing wildly to global warming, but governments do have the responsibility to explore the methods of reducing CO2 outputs that are the easiest and least disruptive to people's lifestyles, before stuffing taxes on travelling around when it is these very same governments who have encouraged us to lead lives which require so much travel. In this respect the UK government is about as much use as a clockwork orange.

All this from a box of frying pans.

I told you that working in a supermarket was stressful.