Eggs in Paper Cartons photo © Rebecca Rockefeller
Keep your eggs zero waste: Buy them in paper cartons, not clear plastic or Styrofoam. When you’re done with the paper cartons, there are many ways to reuse them. Here are a few ideas to spark your egg carton reuse:
- Fill them with eggs again if you have a local bulk egg source.
- Offer them to local chicken farmer friends, urban or country, or to vendors at your local farmers’ market.
- Do something practical with them around your home or garden – National Geographic has some great ideas to get you started.
- Turn them into an arts and crafts material – Crafty Crow has a great selection of projects.
- Offer them to a local preschool, elementary, or art teacher. While you may not have time to get your craft on, there are many kids who do!
- If all else fails, put them in your compost bin – They break down quickly!
- While some municipalities accept paper egg cartons in their recycling bins, the recycled paper pulp used for egg cartons has fibers that are too short to be used again in paper or cardboard. If you’re interested in lowering your footprint on the planet, it probably makes more sense to reuse them as long as possible, then to compost them.
Hands Make a Perfect Carton Whenever Possible Photo © Rebecca Rockefeller
If you’re looking for a radical solution to egg carton impact, try a carton-free life: Raise your own hens and collect their eggs in your hands, baskets, colanders, or bowls. An increasing number of US cities and towns are revising their code to allow hens. It only takes a couple to supply a small family with all the eggs they need, and hens do a wonderful job of converting human food scraps into new nutritious food for humans.
Try for Eggs Straight from the Hen, Carton-Free photo © Rebecca Rockefeller
Just to prove that egg cartons are versatile, we’ve created an app that allows you to input the name of any item in your home and see how you can reuse or recycle it. Input “egg cartons” and you’ll see this for starters:
Click Through For Egg Carton Reuses at Trash Backwards
After egg cartons, try something else like “junk mail,” and we’re sure you’ll be impressed.
In the meantime, do you have a favorite egg carton reuse or chicken farmer tip? We’d love to hear from you!
Paper Egg Carton photo Rebecca Rockefeller
This is my first year with hens and I LOVE them. They’re interesting to watch. They turn over the compost pile. When allowed to forage (free-range), they’re not expensive to keep. (A 40 lb bag of food costs $17 which still isn’t a lot.) And my daughter (2 y/o) loves chasing them around too! They are the easiest animals to have around. They don’t require attention AND they produce food.
Aren’t hens great? We love ours, too – And I’ve reduced our feed cost a bit by starting a chicken bucket program at my daughters’ school. I drop off clean buckets each Monday, the kids in each participating classroom put their food waste into the bucket after snacks and lunch, and then I pick the buckets up on Friday. What the hens don’t eat goes into my worm bins and compost pile. Surprisingly, the food doesn’t go bad between Monday and Friday, and my hens love it! Here’s hoping more people catch the chicken bug – Everything you say about how easy they are has been true for us, too.