Yesterday, on the way into work I popped into Poundland and bought some Oreos and Lotus Biscoff biscuits. Both are vegan and both are very mediocre biscuits. They’re are no Hobnob, but sadly the days of yummy, crunchy, chunky chocolate coated biscuits are over.

They are both vegan but that’s where the eco benefits end. If I knew how to insert a snazzy table here I would, but I don’t, so here’s the breakdown:

Oreos

• Contain palm oil (doesn’t say it’s sustainable and a quick Google around brings up such stomach-dropping headlines as ‘Did an orangutan die for your Oreos?’)
• The biscuits are wrapped in little plastic packets
• The outer cardboard packet actively promotes drinking milk

Lotus biscuits

• Contain sustainable palm oil (is it though? Really? Apparently so as the company has scored top marks on the WWF’s palm oil sustainably scorecard in 2016)
• The biscuits are wrapped in little plastic packets and then covered in another outer plastic packet (at least the Oreos come in a cardboard packet)
• A quick Google brings up nothing about Lotus biscuits’ environmental credentials but apparently the spread got recalled one time for containing traces of metal. At least it wasn’t plastic.

When it comes to packaging, Oreos have less plastic but other than that, the black and white biscuits seem very shady environmentally when compared to Lotus.

Both biscuits dissolve into s sugary nothingness when dunked in tea so maybe I should abandon both and try to make a homemade, packaging free dunky biscuit?