How to Have a Waste-Free Halloween

Holidays sure can get wasteful. Halloween often involves decorations that are thrown out, like straw bales and pumpkins. And think of all those plastic masks and candy wrappers! But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some tips on how to have a waste-free Halloween.

1. Save the seeds of the pumpkin you use for your jack-o-lantern. When you scoop out the pumpkin flesh to make the lantern, save the seeds. They are full of nutrients and have many health benefits. Do not wash them, but separate them from the stringy pulp with your fingers and spread them out on newspaper to dry. Then you can roast and salt them, or eat them raw.

2. Eat the pumpkin’s flesh. The canned pumpkin so popular for pies was once pumpkin flesh. You can make pies, soups, stews, casseroles, breads, and other dishes using pumpkin flesh.

3. Rather than throwing the pumpkin shell in the trash after you’ve used the seeds and flesh, recycle the spent jack-o-lantern by composting it.

4. Choose sustainable options for costumes, which can be wasteful. Children wear them once, usually for just a few hours, then toss them out.

-Try renting costumes instead.

-Go to your local second-hand store (such as Goodwill) and purchase a costume there, or buy clothing to improvise a costume.

-If you do buy a new costume or make one, pass it on to someone or give it to charity. That’s how the costumes get to Goodwill in the first place!

5. Treats and candies wrapped individually generate a lot of trash.

-Buy candy in bulk or make your own treats. Then package them yourself in reusable containers, such as mini glass jars or little decorative boxes.

-Give non-candy treats, like mini art supplies, inexpensive jewelry, or temporary tattoos.

6. Use reusable containers when trick-or-treating. Children can make their own treat containers from used buckets, shopping bags, or other containers. They can even make their own cloth bags.

7. Use recycled materials for decorations. You can cut spooky shapes out of the sides of paper bags, put sand in the bottom, and insert a candle. This makes festive luminaries for trick-or-treaters. Make spooky shapes from materials you have around your home. Raid your recycling bin and get creative!

-Painting a used plastic butter tub black, insert black pipe cleaners into it, and make a spider.

-Carve chunks of Styrofoam packaging into balls and top them with paper cones to make witches.

-String Styrofoam packing peanuts to make a long chain, then hang it over yard shrubs or from the porch to make a spider web.

-Use these strings of peanuts to make appendages for a Styrofoam-cup skeleton.

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