Halloween (aka All Hallows’ Eve, or All Saints’ Eve) can be a great occasion. Of course, as with any major event there’s a bit of cleaning up involved the following morning.
Here are just a few of the ways (10, to be exact) you can make your Halloween more environmentally friendly, and spend more of that clean-up time in bed. Perfect.
- Walk from house to house : Leave the car at home. It’s really that simple.
- Make your own trick-or-treat candy : There are plenty of Halloween recipes available both online and in books. Experiment, have fun and save money in the process.
- Take canvas bags or pillow cases : Sure, there are plastic bags available for doing this; but why not keep things simple? Grab a few canvas bags or pillow cases from around the house, and just throw ’em in the wash afterwards.
- Make your own latex rubber masks : This is not only a great project for the kids, it’s a cost-effective way to go about things. What’s more, it can be a whole lotta fun.
- Make a costume from old clothes : When combined with the ‘make your own latex mask‘ project above, this one turns recycling into an art form. Besides, do you really want to look the same as everyone who buys a disposable one from a local store?
- Send invitations via email : Rather than making up (or purchasing) paper invitations for your Halloween party, invite people electronically. Send out emails, text messages, build a website – whatever seems appropriate for those involved. Or just go out and talk to them personally.
- Reinvigorate old party games : Try bobbing for apples, or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Not only will you save money, you’ll save preparation time and people will have just as much fun.
- Use re-usable cutlery and crockery : No matter where your party is, why not add a touch of class by using ‘proper’ cutlery and crockery instead of disposables. Much cheaper, and easy enough to clean. There’ll also be considerably less garbage to put out the following day.
- Put leftover food scraps in a worm farm : As pointed out earlier, worms will eat just about anything. Including pumpkin.
- Re-use Halloween decorations : many of the Halloween decorations around the house can be easily kept and reused next year (a few small changes will make sure they actually look quite different). Think of it as recycling.
When trick-or-treating
For Halloween parties
Final thoughts on having an environmentally-friendly Halloween
As you can see, having a ‘green‘ Halloween isn’t exactly hard work. Go out and have fun.
When I was a kid, everyone did homemade costumes, except the littlest kids who weren’t quite old enough to handle making something like that. But as soon as we reached 7 or 8 years old, we made our own, from stuff around the house and visits to the thrift store. Those are some of my best memories!
Also, we always used pillowcases for treat bags, but I think that was more out of a misguided optimism regarding how much candy we expected to collect.
I always used a pillowcase as well. It was just what mom said to use, so I did.
I remember making a robot costume out of cardboard boxes one year for a contest at school. All the students of the school paraded around the gym for the teachers to vote on our costumes.
wow, I hadn’t thought of that until just now after reading your comment.
I think that with convenience being a factor and with more two income families, it’s just a time issue. I believe that very few families have the ability to create the costumes for the kids. That said, I am 40, without children of my own, so I am not really in the “families” loop
ps, dont’ get me started about Christmas gifts and the marketing of it all