Squad Ghouls

Halloween is on the horizon. Are your kids already asking if they can be Baby Shark or any of the Avengers? Does your neighborhood or block go big with the decorations? Or were you tasked with throwing this year’s party? Holidays often feel like real sustainability challenges, and particularly Halloween. Between costumes, decorations, parties, and even snacks, there’s a lot of potential for waste -- but we prefer to see the flip side: there’s a lot of potential for sustainability! Here are some ideas for how to keep your Halloween low-to-zero waste.

Costumes. As always, homemade costumes that utilize fabric and items that you’ve already got around the house are first-level zero-wasting. But sometimes we don’t have the time or the creative brainpower to put together something homemade. That’s why we suggest tapping into your community. Kids grow too quickly to ever wear their costumes more than twice (and twice is lucky!), Consult your local parents network for costume swapping and reusing. Because Frozen will be cool for another decade at least!

Decorations. We’ll admit, we love decorating for parties but sometimes, some experts do it better. So we searched the internet for the best sustainable Halloween decorations and found them on Inhabitat.com. They put your old cereal boxes and egg cartons to work!

Parties. Don’t forget our general sustainable party recommendations. Instead of single-use plastic plates, try reusable ones, or switching to paper or bamboo. The same goes for cups and cutlery -- try to work in a new eco-friendlier alternative, whatever level you’re at.

Zero Waste = Snacks. If you’ve made it to the pumpkin patch this season, you’re ahead of the game. We haven’t and we’re probably relying on the local grocery. However you get your pumpkin, when you carve its guts out be sure to zero waste those guts into THIS delicious snack. Be sure to grab some of your go-to Full Circle tools to tackle the outside (in the inside) of your perfectly-picked pumpkin. We recommend Lean & Mean for the grimy outsides, our Power Couple pan scrapers to get those insides smooth, and if you're a bit icked out -- our  gloves work wonders.

Happy Halloween!