Easter is just around the corner. Not the eggs though. They’ve always been there in our kitchen (unless you don’t eat eggs of course). Every egg we crack open leaves behind eggshells as waste.
This Easter let’s crack the waste cycle instead. Here are three ways you can reuse your eggshells!
- Garden Use
If you are a gardener, eggshells can be helpful. They can become nutrients for your plants and even act as a pest repellent.
Plants don’t have bones like human but they still need calcium to grow stronger cell wall structures and become resilient. Calcium deficiency in plants may also cause blossom end rot – a dark blotch growing at one end of a fruit – which is common in larger fruits like tomatoes.
Eggshells provide just the calcium your plants need. Rinse, crush then sprinkle them around the soil or the compost that you use.
While it’s not scientifically proven, some believe that eggshells can also deter crawling insects such as worms and slugs. These pests like moist environments and the jagged edges of crushed eggshells can deter them.
- Egg Crafts
Eggshells can be the perfect material for some crafting! With Easter coming up soon, why not decorate your house with some real Easter eggshells?
Next time before you crack open your eggs, try to “blow out” the eggs. You might need to practice, but this extra step can retain the shape of your egg whilst emptying the content for cooking or baking. You can even preserve it so you can keep them for years!
If you are going for something simpler, you can still use crushed eggshells for other types of art like an eggshell mosaic. This could be a great hands-on session for children at Easter!
- Making chalk
Chalk is made of calcium carbonate. Did you know eggshells are too? With a few simple ingredients from your kitchen, you can make chalks from the eggshells. Check out a full tutorial on chalk-making here.
Ground eggshells can be used to substitute calcium carbonate powder used in commercially produced chalk. Eggshell chalk can be grittier and coarser by comparison. But the finer you grind down the eggshells, the smoother your chalk is. Not to mention the therapeutic process of this.
To give your chalk a dash of colour, you can look around your kitchen for some natural dye materials such as paprika and beetroot powder. The colours that your home-made dry materials produce might surprise you!
As for aluminium eggshells…
Let’s be honest, you might be eating chocolate eggs more than real eggs over the Easter period. No eggshells are needed to be cracked open, but a lot of aluminium wrapping is peeled off and tossed into the bin.
You can’t reuse this wrapping in your garden or make chalk but perhaps you could use it in creative crafts. And you can still recycle them!
A simple scrunch test tells you whether the wrapping is recyclable: If the wrapping stays scrunched up, it’s made of aluminium and can go into the recycling bin. If it springs back, it means the wrapping contains plastic foil, which is harder to recycle, and needs to be sorted into the general waste bin.
Time for a cracking Easter!
Whatever your approach to making the most of your eggs, whether Easter or otherwise, we are certain you will come up with some eggcellent ideas!