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Go GREEN this Halloween
I missed the boat last Halloween (2014) when it came to sharing this information. So, hopefully it is just as pertinent to everyone now. My full-time employer tries to encourage all employees to “go green” whenever possible by recycling, not printing unless you absolutely have to, and much more! I know it’s only August, but better to plan ahead if you want to Go GREEN this Halloween!
I found this information to be interesting – especially to those with children at Halloween.
Holidays provide a great time to gather with friends and family. While celebrating these special occasions, why not celebrate the environment as well?
Halloween is a favorite holiday for many, but this spooky day has a negative impact on the environment that can be a lot scarier than witches, ghosts and goblins. Here are some tips* on how to green your Halloween.
Eco-friendly Halloween costumes
In 2012, 41 million kids went trick-or-treating, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s a lot of costumes — not to mention the packaging they come in.
Tip: Have other parents over for a “costume swap” or check out your local thrift shop for ghoulish vintage hand-me-downs.
Use homemade, natural decorations
The store aisles are overflowing with decorations to put your home in the mood for Halloween.
Tip: Instead of spending your money on these decorations (many of which are made of plastic), head outside for decorations with an autumn flair and shop at your local farmers markets for gourds, pumpkins, cornstalks, hay bales and Indian corn bunches.
Bonus tip: You can also make decorations using recyclable materials like cardboard, newspaper and aluminum foil.
Make the most out of your pumpkin
Tip: Buy your pumpkin from a local farmers market, and don’t forget to save the seeds when you hollow out your jack-o-lantern! Roasted pumpkin seeds are an easy, healthy snack.
Bonus tip: Most commercial candles are made from paraffin, so opt for a beeswax candle to light your jack-o-lantern.
Bonus bonus tip: When Nov. 1 rolls around, start composting by adding your jack-o-lantern and other biodegradable waste to your compost bin.
Green Halloween treats
There are many companies that specialize in healthier alternatives to traditional candy.
Tip: Pass out organic candy and satisfy your sweet tooth without compromising your health. Or avoid candy all together and pass out small trinkets like pencils, stickers, seed packets, temporary tattoos and other treasures.
Party smarter
Make your party green from the very start:
- Avoid paper invitations by using a free online invitation service. (evite or even Facebook)
- When shopping for food for your party, always bring your own cloth or recycled bags and look for food that is organic and local.
- A great party activity is making your own treat bag. Instead of buying the bright orange jack-o-lantern pail, why not let your party-goers decorate used pillow cases to make unique and green treat bags? Remember the muslin bag tutorial I shared recently from Sabrina?
Keep it going beyond Halloween!
Just a few small changes in your lifestyle can have a large impact on the environment.
If you are ready to implement a recycling center at your home you could try these great bins from Amazon.
Source
* Tips provided by CelebrateGreen.net.
Do you have any great “green” ideas for Halloween or at home in general?
This post contains affiliate links, and I may be compensated for any purchases made via that link. GeminiRed Creations disclosure policy.
Comments
86 responses to “Go GREEN this Halloween”
What a great list. I’m not a big Halloween celebrater, but we do always make our own costumes, and we cycle through them every few years.
It’s a lot of fun to make costumes!
Loved these tips for going green (and saving money) on Halloween. So easy to do. Great idea to include bonus tips, too.
Thank you for stopping by! I hope you learned some tips you can put in action.
I love this idea. Have to make the most of those costumes! I like the costume swapping idea. I hadn’t thought of that before.
I think it’s a great idea to keep filed away to use each year – it would be fun with the kids school friends.
I absolutely LOVE your green Halloween tips 😀
Thank you – I hope you are able to use some of them!
A costume swap sounds like fun! I’m going to try to talk my husband into a couple’s costume this year . . . I’m just not sure what yet 🙂
I love to see people in couple’s costumes – there are so many fun ideas!
Great tips! Actually for this year, I am thinking of alternative to candies. the pencils, trinkets etc is a good suggestion. Aside from being practical, will also help save parents like me for an extra trip to the dentist.
I think the pencils and stuff like that are great ideas!
These are great tips…although I find that when sending out invitations, more people respond to paper than to digital. I’ve tried it all different ways. It is still the best.
I think it definitely depends on the person. I like digital because I can link it to my calendar and get reminders or get a notice if there is an update so it keeps it front of mind.
I love giving small toys or trinkets out for Halloween. Honestly, how much candy does a kid need (plus, multiply that by 3 in our case). We could keep the entire city in candy for a year with all of that candy. Pencils are an especially great idea because they are a consumable product that most children need for school anyway.
Also, totally with you on the thrifted costumes. I don’t always have the time to make ours (although I prefer this) and I refuse to buy new when so many just get tossed out every year after use. Thanks for sharing these tips for a Green Halloween!
I remember when my brother and I were kids and each year my mom would get our trick-or-treat bags out and there would still be candy from the previous year. It was fun to get it, but we never ate it all.
These are some great ideas! We don’t have a super “green” household, but my husband and I do try to be eco friendly when we can. I think my favorite part about that is that there’s usually less trash and cleanup when we try to be conscious of it.
We could do a better job at my house too, but every little bit counts.
Great tips…we don’t carve pumpkins anymore since my daughter is now grown…but will pass this along to others that do.
We don’t carve one either – just cut it open for the delicious seeds!
We love buying gourds and pumpkins at our farmer’s market. Then we roast the pumpkin and mash it (a culinary delight I learned when I was in Africa). So yummy! We also save our kids’ Halloween costumes and pass them down to younger siblings. Great tips!
That sounds like a great idea!
A costume swap sounds like a great idea! After all where do all the costumes from previous years go?
I certainly don’t know what happened to mine when I was a kid!
Thank you for this, we always make our own decorations and i bake cookies that we wrap and give away. It’s hard sometimes to recycle costumes but it helps to continue being creative.
There are a lot of great options for treats for kids at Halloween, but I know people get nervous with homemade stuff. It sure beats candy though!
What a great collection of tips! I really like the ones about decorating. We don’t have kids & aren’t anticipation trick or treaters but I would like to do a little decorating b
In the almost 11 years in our house we’ve had 3 kids stop by. My favorite Halloween/fall decoration is a handblown glass pumpkin from a friend I went to school with!
A costume swap is a really good idea. 🙂 I also always use electronic invitations. It’s convenient, and eco-friendly.
I prefer electronic because there are so many options and they are easy to use!
I love the idea of having a costume swap! And we just decorate for Fall in general as opposed to decorating specifically for Halloween. We usually do pumpkins and a make a few vases filled with acorns and twigs we find outside and add some fake flowers. Once Fall is over, we can return the sticks and acorns back to nature.
What a terrific idea of using stuff you can put back in nature when finished!
These are great ideas! I love the idea of visiting the farmer’s market for fresh produce and corn stalks as decorations! I always say I want to do this and never do!
The farmer’s market is full of so many great things all year long!
Fantastic tips for sprucing up Halloween and making it have less of an impact on the environment.
Every little bit helps!
i LOVE the idea of the costume swap! i wish i had done that this year!
There is always next year! Save this post as a reminder. 🙂
Here is another idea for your pumpkin- instead of carving it, paint it! Then, cut it up and eat it as a winter squash. They do not make good pumpkin pies, as the jack-o-lantern pumpkins are much more watery than pie-pumpkins. However, there are TONS of great winter squash recipes on Pinterest. 🙂
Watching people ‘consume’ Halloween at our local walmart is mind boggling, knowing that it is duplicated at thousands of walmarts across the country, and many other stores as well. Truck loads of costumes, party supplies, and decorations are sold for weeks before the 31st- they have started already- and the waste is absolutely incredible. The amount of candy sold is mind boggling. Thanks for putting in a plug for a little greenness!
Painting the pumpkins is a great idea. I’ve seen some ideas online and they are really cute! Walmart before Halloween is a zoo!
We bought the kids costumes from the thrift store. Usually we just use what we have around the house, but one of the kids was given a costumes. I felt the other two might feel jealous if they were made use whatever we had around the house.
As far as the decorating goes, I just stick with the fall stuff we already own. Keeps it simple and less expense.We recycle decorations from year to year and mix them up.
These tips are wonderful and I really like the idea of a costume swap! I try to make my costumes by going to Goodwill, garage sales, etc for the supplies as much as possible. I keep a lot of costumes from previous years and think sharing is a great idea!
I think it would be really fun to do a costume swap at school with all the other kids from the same grade.
Going green this Halloween is a fun and Eco-friendly concept. We should be mindful of reducing our carbon footprint. You covered your bases! I really like the idea of a costume swap and the natural home decor looks better than that plastic stuff anyway, right? 🙂
So much better than plastic!
A costume swap is a wonderful idea–as well as the thrift store tip. I’ve found several costumes there over the years. My boys love to reuse their costumes as dress up clothes for pretend play, so we get a lot of use out of them. Thanks for all the other great “green Halloween” tips!
Playing dress up is always fun! I don’t blame them! 🙂
I love your passion for respecting the planet and caring for the resources we have. Thanks for the great suggestions!
Thank you – I could still do a better job, but I try whenever possible.
These are such wonderful tips! We always save the pumpkin seeds and roast them. So good!
Roasted pumpkin seeds are my favorite!
Lots of food for thought here, with all the holidays and occasions we celebrate. There is such a lot of wastage, it’s always good to think how to do things better and in a more effective way. Thanks!
Any time we can avoid waste it’s a good thing!
Very informative tips. I love all your bonus tips.
Thank you! Bonuses are always great.
I love Halloween! We usually buy recycled costumes, and organic candy is the yummiest! Thinking about other ways to make this holiday green is a new thing for me. Online invitations are awesome. Recyclable bags make the groceries much easier to carry too. I have found that I do a lot of “green” things without even thinking about the environmental impact because those things save money or just make sense!
I have never tried organic candy. What is your favorite? I do most of my invitations for anything via Facebook events or evite because it’s so much simpler and you can download it to your calendar!
Organic success are the best. I don’t know why, but they are DELICIOUS!
I thrifted my daughters Halloween costume and I don’t think I will ever do anything different. First of all, it’s way cheaper! Second, I can just donate it back to the thrift store when I’m done and pay it forward. 😉 Love this post!
That’s a perfect solution – buy from a thrift shop and sell at a thrift shop! Just keep recycling!
These are all such great tips! I hadn’t thought about going green for Halloween, but we already do it for so many other things it shouldn’t be to hard to incorporate it now. We are making our costumes this year because it is the twins’ first Halloween so we want some that we can save for them when they get older. I will definitely keep the rest of this in mind/
I think once you get started on the going green initiative its definitely easier to expand into other areas. How fun that you are making costumes for twins! You will have to share what you did for them.
Great tips that I will be sharing as we don’t celebrate Halloween.
I don’t have any children and I’m not a fan of Halloween either, but I was glad I was able to share a post that made so many people think about how their decisions affect the environment, and I appreciate you sharing as well. I do love a good pumpkin, though! I look forward to broiling fresh pumpkin seeds every year.
Wow! I never really thought of the environmental impact Halloween had with all of the waste involved, but luckily as an eco-friendly person I always do my best to cut back on waste. We almost always buy costumes used, swapped or make our own. And our jack-o-lanterns get composted 🙂 We do a lot more, too, to make sure we don’t hurt our beloved Earth! Great post!
I’m glad you liked the post and it gave you some more food for thought in an eco-friendly way! Keep up the good work on being environmentally friendly!
Awesome tips. I had never thought of a green Halloween, but I see it can be very useful. I have never actually experienced Halloween myself, but from the sounds and looks of it, it should be interesting.
I think we have all been in the same boat of not giving a lot of thought to being green at Halloween. It has always seemed to be a “disposable” holiday and the tips help keep being eco-friendly in mind.
Thanks for reminding me to be more mindful around the holidays. I’m usually not too bad when it comes to Halloween, but at Christmas I love going all out and probably could be better at not being wasteful.
Good point about Christmas! In my family we always recycle boxes and tissue paper if they don’t get ruined. We have some shirt size boxes that have seen several Christmases.
So many great tips! I am always looking for ways to be greener or save a little money. These tips will help me do just that! Thanks!!
Can’t we all save a little money? That is probably the motto of the day!
Costume swapping and buying good from farmers markets is such a great idea! I am going to have to make a trip this weekend to get some pumpkins!
I need to check out our local farmers market this year for a pumpkin – the ones at the store are so expensive and not usually in very good shape.
These are great ideas for making Halloween greener! I love the idea of a costume swap!
Everyone really likes the idea of the costume swap – they can be so expensive and this is a great way to avoid waste and save money.
Costume swapping is such a great idea. Saves money, time and so many resources. Great idea!
It can be great for kids and adults. I imagine it would be really fun to do a costume swap at school.
I’m all for going green in our home. These are nice tips, especially the costume swap. That’s a savvy idea too. The Pumpkin patch at the local Farmer’s market is a highlight of the Fall season!
I love visiting the local farmer’s markets around. You can find some really great stuff there!
Heather, this are great tips! I never thought about all of the waste that happens on Halloween. We can definitely do better, and this post gives me a lot of ideas. I especially like the idea of costume swapping AND composting the pumpkin. Good calls!
I never dawned on me either until the information was shared with me. Composting is a great thing to incorporate into our lives.
These are fantastic, doable ideas, and not just for Halloween. I will be sharing your post on Facebook. Thanks for a concise, practical list to help us be more mindful about how we decorate and celebrate during the holidays.
I agree – they can be integrated into our lives in many ways. Thanks for stopping by!
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