By Charmaine Peters, Farm Director at Arden
Halloween is the spookiest time of the year when people of all ages can enjoy dressing up in scary costumes, decorating with jack-o’-lanterns, and trick or treating! It’s fun, but the amount of waste produced after the holiday is rather scary.
An alarming 83% of Halloween costumes are non-recyclable; that’s the equivalent of about 2,000 tons of plastic waste or 83 million plastic bottles – and in just one day! In the US alone, there are about 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkin waste and 600 million pounds of candy wrappers, and after all is said and done, they end up in landfills.
Here are some ways to reduce the environmental impact caused by this holiday and turn it into a Green Halloween:
Make Your Own Eco-friendly Costume
Making an eco-friendly DIY Halloween costume is a sustainable and creative way to maximize what you already have. Use old clothes, like worn T-shirts, pants, or shorts. Add some red water-based paint for a bloody look. Tear some parts for a ragged effect or sew on patches to transform into a spooky walking zombie. If you like mixing and matching, piece together old clothes to craft a pirate costume. Don’t forget the classic oversized white shirt, which can easily be turned into ghostly attire. Kids will relish the fun of creating their own unique Halloween look while reducing the expense and waste that comes with a store-bought costume.
Upcycle Halloween Decorations
Why spend money on plastic Halloween decorations when you can make them by upcycling instead? Unleash your creativity by repurposing everyday household items, like bottles, milk cartons, leftover paper towels, tin cans, and more. Paint the leftover paper towel rolls and transform them into candles with electric tealights. Paint a sheet of newspaper with white paint, cut it into long strips, then attach these to a can and add a ghost’s face. Hang it, and now you have a ghost floating in your house. If there’s a nice breeze, consider hanging it on the outside of a window for a bit of movement. You could also turn your cereal boxes into tombstones and your bottles into potions! You’ll be surprised at all the spooky decorations you can make with everyday items if you start to look at things a little differently.
Reuse Trick-or-Treat Bags
Instead of a plastic pumpkin with a likely-to-break handle, make a reusable trick or treat bag for kids to take from house to house. A tote bag would be great as it is eco-friendly and can hold more weight. Use fabric markers to personalize each bag with vampires, bats, pumpkins, and other Halloween imagery, or even just their name initials so they can reuse the bag over and over again – and stay safe by not revealing their full names to strangers. This reusable bag is now set for this year, and many Halloweens to follow.
Give Out Environmentally Friendly Halloween Treats
Candy is a staple at Halloween, but these treats can have a scary impact on the environment – and on children’s teeth. While we need to keep treats individually wrapped for safety, that doesn’t mean you can’t hand out eco-friendly treats to trick-or-treaters that stop by your door. Look for companies that package candy in mini boxes, as opposed to plastic wrapping, that are easily recyclable once they’re empty.
Celebrating a Green Halloween helps protect our planet and fosters a sense of responsibility and creativity in all of us. By making conscious choices in our costumes, decorations, and treats, we can turn a holiday known to be associated with waste into an opportunity to enjoy the spooky season without leaving such a scary mark on our planet.