Greening up Halloween
Get scarily creative and save frightening amounts of cash!
Halloween has always been a big deal in America, but was largely ignored here for years, with Bonfire Night and Diwali getting all the attention instead. Now, with the ebb and flow of culture between the US and Britain – they get The Office, Pop Idol and David Beckham; we get Niketown, Starbucks and Friends re-runs – Halloween is here to stay.
There’s no denying that Halloween is a fantastic excuse for a party, but surely there’s a way of celebrating that doesn’t cost the earth, in both senses? At last count, North Americans were spending more than $6.5 billion dollars on Halloween, and the UK spent over £120 million last year. Ouch. That figure’s far more terrifying than opening your front door to a huddle of hoodies muttering ‘trick or treat’. Especially when you bear in mind that many of those billions are blown on mass-produced cheap plastic party stuff that lasts one night before being chucked in the bin and then into landfill.
Chances are you’ll have a few trick or treaters turning up at your door and you’ll chuck a few goodies at them so you don’t get your bins upturned. But think about your choice of treat. Homemade popcorn is healthy and tasty or home baked cookies with spooky decorations make you look clever and thoughtful to your neighbours…. choose paper bags to put your treats in and you’ve just saved money, useless plastic and the teeth of your neighbours’ kids.
Got an invitation to a Halloween party? Think about your costume and get creative before you plump for the plastic coated cheapo outfit at your local joke shop. Doesn’t matter if you’re crap at sewing, it’s going to be dark - no one’s going to notice your wobbly stitching. This website - http://familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts/season/specialfeature/halloween_... - has some great ideas for home-made Halloween costumes that need only a few cheap materials (which you may already have anyway) and an hour or two of your time. There’s a skeleton (luminous paint on old black clothes) a fab pointy witch’s hat made from newspaper, and a step-by-step guide on how to paint your child’s face so it looks like a pumpkin. Or as if they’ve just discovered fake tan.
If you’re planning to carve a Jack-O- Lantern make sure you use the leftovers afterwards. Every Halloween 1 million pumpkins are sold in the UK with 99% of them being carved into scary candle filled faces only for the good bits to go in the bin. Pumpkins are great in soups and stews and seeds are not only tasty but also unbelievably good for you. There are some delicious pumpkin recipes that use all these leftover bits. Check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mostof_pumpkins.shtml and http://vegbox-recipes.co.uk/ingredients/pumpkin.php. The tough skin can go straight on your compost heap. Click here for more detail on how to start composting. http://www.acmeclimateaction.com/athome/brown-new-gold.
If your spooky décor doesn’t stop with a jack-o-lantern, make homemade decorations from old newspapers and bits you have lying around, hang up LED or solar lights instead of standard electric.. and most importantly, put it all away in a box (including your wonkily sewn costume) and use it again next year.
Considering your purchases and being a bit more creative doesn’t mean missing out on the fun – in fact the incredibly helpful website www.greenhalloween.org suggests that it does kids good to see Halloween being treated more simply. Anyway, if the little ankle-biters do feel hard done by, remind them it’s Christmas just nine weeks after Halloween; let’s not get started on that festival’s carbon footprint… just keep an eye out for our story in a few weeks on how you can enjoy a greener Christmas.
Happy Halloween.
For more useful Halloween tips check out:
10 top tips on having a green Halloween
http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/green-products-services/...
Get all your green Halloween supplies at Ecotopia
http://www.ecotopia.co.uk/pages/cms/60/green_halloween.html
Some great home made costume ideas (with instructional videos!) on Treehugger
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/green_diy.php