From the spooky styrofoam gravestones, to the plastic pumpkin candy buckets, to the polyester costumes, plastic waste is haunting Halloween. Here are a few tricks you can use this year to make Halloween safe and fun for everyone, pandemic and all!
Sustainable Sweet & Salty Treats
Trick-or-treating may be canceled, but you can still get your candy fill by making treats at home! Baking your own sweets means less plastic candy wrappers. This rocks because food wrappers (including candy wrappers) aren’t recyclable and are one of the top items littering our beaches.
If salty snacks are more your thing, try roasting your own pumpkin seeds! You can carve your pumpkin and eat it too! ;)
This leads us to our next sustainable spooky tip.
Decorate With Intention
In addition to roasting the pumpkin seeds you pull out of your jack-o’-lantern, you can decorate with seasonal produce like squash and roast it for dinner a little later.
When your jack-o’-lantern has seen its last days, be sure to compost it instead of throwing it in the trash. Americans throw out around 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins every year. The majority of those are sent to landfill. When pumpkins, and other food waste, are put in the garbage and sent to landfills they can’t naturally decompose. They exist long after they should and contribute to the production of methane gas, a greenhouse gas.
Finally, ditch plastic skeletons for all-natural, locally sourced ones! Don’t worry we’re only kidding... but seriously, avoid plastic junk please.
Shop What You’ve Got
Whether you’re dressing up for a night in or are heading out to a small socially-distanced Halloween gathering, shop your closet for your costume! Using what you already have is one of the most sustainable ways to celebrate.
Need a little inspiration for a quick and easy DIY costume?
- If you, or your dad, have an oversized white dress shirt, grab that along with a pair of tube socks and voila, you’re looking like Risky Business!
- Have a black dress? Of course you do. Throw your hair in braids and you’ll quickly turn into Wednesday Adams.
- Everyone loves a black cat, and it’s a purrrty easy costume to pull off. All you need is a black outfit and a little makeup. Use a bit of eyeliner to draw whiskers and when you look in the mirror you’ll mistake yourself for a meow-nificent cat!
The Most Sustainable Costume Of All
If you’re looking for an even easier costume option, try out our mermaid filter on IG! Visit our profile to check it out, and tag us with your sustainable spooky season look for a chance to win a killer surprise!