What's the most egregious offender in the matter of excess packaging? There are some who think it's the Easter egg, spewing waste plastic and foil into our landfill.

What is an Easter egg?

Is it a chocolate egg, perhaps accompanied by some mini chocolate bars or truffles?

Or is it a combination of the items above with gaudily coloured, glossy card, a plastic box and shiny foil, all jumbled into one seductive whole.

That's the issue that the giants of the confectionery industry have been wrestling with for the last few years.

On the one hand there are voices from the environmental lobby that single out the Easter egg as quite the most outrageous piece of overpackaging in the realm of retail. On the other there are consumers whose eye needs to be drawn to products that make them feel like they want to give them as a gift.

Jo Swinson, Lib Dem MP for Dunbartonshire East, has been campaigning against excess packaging for several years.

"Easter eggs are obviously one of the worst examples of excessive packaging you can find. It is going to taste the same whatever box it comes in. It doesn't make any sense to pay for excess packaging."

Boxing cleverer

Last year she named and shamed various overpackaged eggs including one from Nestle. This year the confectionery giants have seen which way the wind is blowing.

Nestle has eliminated many of the plastic inserts - used to hold the egg in place and protect it - from its boxes and reduced the amount of cardboard used.

BIG REDUCTIONS

• Cadbury's: Treasure eggs which have no box, other eggs' carton sizes cut by 25%
• Nestle: Many plastic inserts removed, packaging reduced 30%
• Mars: Carton weight reduced 42%, plastic insert weight reduced 35%
• M&S: Packaging reduced 30%

Mars is using print ads to trumpet its reduced packaging, and Cadbury's is shrinking boxes, having also introduced its Treasure Eggs range that don't come in a box.

But Ms Swinson says the confectionery giants still have some way to go and that further reductions in box size are required.

Andy Dawe, from waste and recycling action group WRAP, says it is important to remember that there is a functional element to egg packaging.

If packaging prolongs the shelf life of an egg, then waste is avoided. If packaging stops eggs being damaged in transit, then again waste is avoided.

"But one of the biggest concerns for consumers is when they can't recycle the packaging that is presented to them."

Bulky boxes

What you can and can't recycle varies from borough to borough, but there will be many people unable to recycle plastic inserts and even the foil on the egg can probably only be recycled by about 50% of households.

Then there is the environmental cost of transporting bulky egg boxes containing, well, very little egg. 

"You are paying to transport air," says Ms Swinson. "There is still a lot of empty space in them."

But it hasn't always been this way.

Robert Opie, curator of the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising in London, and author of Sweet Memories has been in a position to chart the history of Easter egg packaging.

"In the 1920s smaller eggs might be wrapped in foil and then brought to the shop in a sturdy wooden box that would then act as a display, but there would be other larger, fancier eggs [in their own boxes]."

By the 1950s the use of light bulb style card boxes became widespread for eggs, Mr Opie says, before in the 1960s and 1970s eggs started on their journey to today's flamboyant boxes.

"Cartons became increasingly more complicated, more gifty, more wonderful, more voluminous."

But of course, Easter egg packaging cannot be stripped down totally. The logical conclusion from an environmental perspective would be an egg in a brown paper bag, or perhaps no egg at all.

"You have to bear in mind what you are giving somebody is not just a hollow egg, it is a gift," says Mr Opie. "The packaging is as much a part of the gift as the egg itself.

"Why not just give somebody a bar of chocolate of the same weight? We like the difference in texture. It has a different kind of crunch moment."

So assuming that Easter egg packaging is a compromise between attractive design and minimal environmental impact, how green can it be?

St Asaph-based product design consultancy Design Reality, which recently completely Easter egg packaging design work for Duc d'O, a Belgian chocolatier, tackled the idea.

"There are several factors that should be considered when designing such a product," Mr Evans says. "These include consumer expectations and needs, durability and strength in order to avoid damage to the fragile egg, its practicality in terms of palletisation and shelf stacking, an attractive graphical appearance and structural design, and an increasing desire of the consumer to purchase a product that is either ecologically sourced, or able to be recycled."

Design Reality's hypothetical Eco Egg would attempt to minimise the amount of material wasted.

"This involved creating a simple-sided pyramid that would fold up around the egg, with built in tabs to secure the egg inside," says Mr Evans. "The pyramid would be tied together at the top with a ribbon, thereby negating the requirement for gluing or tabs that would complicate the assembly process. The design would not require an inner plastic shell either.

"This design would inherently present a novel element to its 'unwrapping', intended to delight and surprise the consumer.

"Its four-sided pyramidal shape would also tessellate, fitting together into a pallet or shelf either by slotting together 'side by side', or using a simple punched cardboard sheet that would separate the different layers of pyramids on the shelf."

Hence, fewer lorry journeys and less fuel used.