Green Your Halloween!

green your halloween juicygreenmom

Halloween is quickly approaching – stores are full of costumes that are likely to be worn once, toxic halloween makeup, and cheap candy and chocolate that will fill our children with chemicals and toxins – AAAACK!! Scary!!

You CAN green your Halloween, though – there’s a site dedicated to just that.

GreenHalloween.org is a great site with lots of resources and tips for a healthier and greener Halloween.

Since I had my daughter, I’ve been having a hard time with what to do at Halloween. I am usually pretty picky about what she eats, so it would make sense for me to do the same at Halloween, and not expose her to the gross artificial dyes, high-fructose corn syrup and overabundance of sugar. And then of course there’s the ridiculous amount of garbage generated from all the snack size individual packages of treats, and disposable decorations. 

There are actually lots of resources online for ideas on how to make your Halloween healthy and green!

Here’s a round-up of some awesome tips to make your Halloween just as fun, and more sustainable. If you have a favourite post about green Halloween tips – share in the comments!

Some ideas for what you can hand out instead of traditional candy:

1. mini sticker boxes or sticker sheets

2. small bags of crayons (I got a large box of crayons then made simple envelopes out of brown paper bags to eliminate the use of plastic)

3. small bags of beads

4. choose candy packaged in cardboard that can be recycled, rather than plastic.

5. choose candy with more natural ingredients, and WITHOUT high-fructose corn syrup, like YumEarth organic lollipops.

6. unopened toys from kids meals (I know, I know, why on earth would I let my kid eat at McDonald’s or other fast food joints? That’s fodder for another post. In brief, it doesn’t happen often. However, I can re-use the toys for something else, being green AND frugal.)

Other Green Halloween Tips:

Use toxin-free Face Paint.

Check out my post here about toxic Halloween makeup – there’s reason to be cautious, both for your health, and for the environment. There are actually a lot of varieties of natural face paint available these days. And you can also use zero-waste, sustainable makeup brands. There are also some great DIY recipes if you run out of time to buy them. Your skin and your body will thank you for not putting more toxins on yourself!

Re-use, swap, or donate costumes.

Consider how many costumes are purchased or made from scratch, worn once, maybe twice if passed along to a friend or sibling, and then thrown away. These fill up our landfills needlessly! Try going to a thrift store to buy second-hand costumes, since they are usually in great shape after only being worn a handful of times. Join a local swap page to trade costumes, buy from someone else, or sell your own old costumes. When you or your child is done with a costume, consider saving it to bring to a costume swap for next year’s Halloween, give it to a friend to re-use, sell it on a community swap page, or donate it to a non-profit organization thrift store to be re-sold.

Eat and compost your pumpkins.

If you’re carving a pumpkin, save the pumpkin flesh to cook with. There are tons of recipes for pumpkin soups, muffins, sauces – the possibilities are endless! Toast the pumpkin seeds with a little oil and salt for a delicious snack (one of my favourite things about Halloween as a kid!). When Halloween is over, compost your jack-o-lantern so it can feed next year’s spring garden!

Other resources:

Halloween Makeup & why it’s scary! (juicy green mom)

22 Green Halloween Ideas (sustainable baby steps)

Green  Halloween: How to Have an Eco-Friendly Holiday (Huffington Post)

5 Healthy Candy Swaps for Halloween (kula mama)

huge list of Green Halloween Ideas! (planet pals)

10 Sweet Tips for an Eco-friendly Halloween (earth 911)

What tips do you have for a green Halloween?

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5 Responses

  1. I don’t get very many trick or treaters, so there’s bound to be left over treats. So I better have healthy treats, since I’m probably going to be eating them myself….

    • I totally hear you on that one!!! My hubby would make fun of me for sneaking all the left over treats – and they were usually pretty bad. So that is definitely good incentive for getting the good stuff!

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