We LOVE Halloween! The fancy dress, trick or treat, party playlists, decorations – it’s always such a good laugh and fabulous family fun. But Halloween can have quite a heavy carbon footprint if you’re not careful – did you know 22 million pumpkins are expected to go to waste this year in the UK? So we’ve done the hard work for you (well most of it, you won’t get away with it that easily!) and scoured the internet and our own imaginations for some tips on keeping Halloween green in 2022…
Costumes
Fast fashion has an absolutely enormous environmental impact, and unfortunately cheap Halloween costumes tend to be very much in this bracket. Now we get that making your own costumes can be a bit of a nightmare (it is Halloween after all!), so our tip here is to go second hand. Check out your local charity shops or second hand selling sites and your bank balance will thank you as well as the planet! If you’re super-organised you might even want to set up your own Halloween swap shop with other parents in your community. And of course don’t forget to pass it on instead of binning it when you’re finished with it!
Pumpkins
It wouldn’t be Halloween without the fun of pumpkin carving, and seeing your finished masterpieces twinkling outside your house! This year why not do some research and see if you can support local farms who may have pick-your-own, rather than supermarkets? And when it’s all over for another year don’t chuck it in the bin! Pumpkins can be composted (they go especially well if you break them up first. Sure there’s a Smashing Pumpkins joke in there somewhere.) – if you don’t compost in your own garden why not see if there are any local allotments or gardens that would like them. Chickens also love pumpkins (who knew?) so if you have a neighbour who keeps chickens they may be keen to take it off your hands too. And if you keep the seeds you can either toast them for a tasty snack, or dry them and plant them in the spring so next year you have home-grown pumpkins!
Decorations
Decorating for Halloween is great fun, so just try and steer clear of disposables – look for decorations you can pack away and use again next year, as you would for Christmas. You could even encourage your mini-dudes to make some themselves (a fun rainy day activity for half term!). We love collecting conkers and using pipe cleaners for legs! You could make paper doll ghost chains, or use old jam jars to make potions with a few drops of food colouring, glitter or anything else your young witches and wizards can lay their hands on! For lighting your pumpkins, tea lights are normally the go-to, but if you can a beeswax or soy wax candle is much more sustainable than the traditional paraffin types.
Here’s some instructions we found on how to make these cute ghostie chains. 👆
Trick or Treat
Trick or treat can be tricky, as individually wrapped sweets are undeniably convenient. But if you want to avoid the mountains of packaging you could try making some treats of your own? Little biscuits, cake pops or mini fairy cakes are tasty ways to go green this Halloween! Remember to keep an eye out for fairtrade and RSPO (sustainable palm oil) ingredients if you can.
Here’s how to make these yummy spider biscuits 👆
We wish you all a fangtastic Halloween and hope our green tips inspire you this spooky season!
Don’t forget, we have awesome spooky Halloween socks this year in sustainable bamboo and organic cotton, perfect fresh feet on the trick or treat rounds! So go on, inject some colour into your morning and start your Halloween right!