Top tips for a zero waste green Halloween

Little awakens our inner-child quite like Halloween. The chance to dress up as a spooky witch, a pirate or a superhero, host a costume party and overdo it on the candy.

The average American will spend $86.27 on costumes, treats, and decorations this Halloween. Most of which, by Thanksgiving, will be at the bottom of the closet or in the trash.

This year, we’re calling time on waste and saying yes to a super green Halloween! We’ll be making creative upgrades so that come November 1st, the only thing that’s hair-raising is your zombie costume, not the state of the planet.

Conscious candy

Whether we’re snaffling it by the sackful or giving it to the cute trick-or-treaters from down the road, our candy choices have a bigger environmental impact than we imagine.

All those individually wrapped treats and packaging made from several different materials mean only one thing. A mountain of trash that’s hard to recycle.

And did you know that diving into the candy can contribute to deforestation? 50 percent of our favorite sweet snacks contain palm oil, a major cause of the destruction of tropical forests. The knock-on effects are devastating, accounting for 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions as well as destroying the habitats of endangered species including our favorites, the orangutans.

Green Halloween

For a sustainable Halloween feast, choose palm oil free, eco-friendly Halloween treats that have minimal packaging. You could even wrap the candy yourself using biodegradable materials like paper and string.

Zero Waste Halloween

Make like Monica from Friends and bake your own zero waste candy. You get to pick the flavors and decorate them to match your spooky theme. Plus, your neighbors and friends will love you forever.

Costume drama

America is preparing to spend $3.2 billion on Halloween costumes this year. But unless you have a quirky sense of style, the likelihood is that your shop-bought vampire get-up is something you’re only going to wear once. After that, it’s life at the back of the closet. Or, like the 7 million costumes thrown away in the UK each year, they go to landfill, where they sit for up to 40 years releasing nasty greenhouse gases.

A study in the UK found that 83 percent of the material used for Halloween costumes was unrecyclable plastic. And the plastics aren’t just in our clothes. Everything from wigs, hats, masks and even glitter is trouble. Yup, the sparkly stuff is made of plastic and once washed off our faces and bodies will end up polluting soil, water and even contaminating the food chain.

Green Halloween

Get creative! Swap last year’s getup with friends or make your own eco-friendly Halloween costumes from old clothes and cool pieces from your local thrift store. Use cardboard to make masks and buy biodegradable glitter approved by the WWF.

Zero Waste Halloween

For the ultimate environmental Halloween costume, buy consignment that you can wear on repeat all year round. That little black dress will make a great base for a witch costume but will also look to-die-for at your next cocktail party. Ditto those spandex silver leggings, Wonderwoman-chic but also perfect for spin class.

Party time

Halloween is a chance to get the squad together, throw on some frightful costumes, a ghoulish playlist and have a party.

You know the big day is around the corner when the twinkling lights of jack-o-lanterns start to dot the neighborhood front steps. This year, 145 million Americans will be practicing their carving skills. But how much of that delicious pumpkin ends up in the garbage?

As well as their grinning lanterns, Americans will spend $2.7 billion on Halloween decorations this year. How many will be tossed away, alongside all those single-use party cups, plates, and napkins?

Green Halloween

The best thing about zero waste Halloween decorations is that they’re super cheap. You can use things you already have lying around the house. Those old bedsheets will make a terrifying ghost, whilst pairs of laddered hose could make some creepy cobwebs.

Choose biodegradable cups, plates, and napkins or better yet, use crockery and cutlery with cloth napkins to go truly zero waste.

After the last cup of punch has been drunk and the last apple bobbed, pack those eco-friendly Halloween decorations away ready for next year.

Zero Waste Halloween

And what to serve your ghoulish guests at your environmentally-friendly Halloween party? Pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins and toasted pumpkin seeds straight from your jack-o-lantern, of course!

Going green for Halloween needn’t be a nightmare. In fact, with a bit of creativity, you can enjoy a way more personalized, fun and eco-friendly holiday and inspire your friends and neighbors to make their own green choices the rest of the year.

At Azneo, we know there’s nothing scarier than climate change. So we’re working to build a sustainable supply chain of ethically-made products that you can feel ghoulishly good about buying and treasuring forever.

halloween_spiders_web

Share how you’re making sustainability spooky
for a zero-waste Halloween over on Instagram with the hashtag

#azneohalloween