4 Easy And Fun Tips For An Eco-Friendly Halloween
When I was a kid, I loved Halloween. Like, LOVED it. You got to dress up in a crazy outfit (that most likely was thrown together from random items found in your parent’s closet) and people filled your pillowcase full of free candy. What’s not to love right?
Once I had kids though and the modern Halloween rituals crept into our life, I started to dread it a bit. Halloween is no longer one spooky fun night of ringing doorbells in your neighborhood. It’s now a whole season that feels like it starts in late August. You’re expected to go all out with your home decorating and take your kids to multiple Halloween events at various locations throughout the entire month of October. By October 31st, we were finding ourselves up to our eyeballs in sugary sweets and plastic spider rings. Soooo many plastic spider rings.
As our lifestyle has evolved into becoming more eco-friendly, I’ve made some changes to how we do Halloween. It’s still a fun time for the kiddos. We still celebrate the holiday. But now in a more eco-friendly way that doesn’t send a pillowcase-full of plastic waste to the landfill on November 1st.
Here are my top 4 easy and fun eco-friendly Halloween tips!
#1: Make Your Own Eco-Friendly Halloween Costume
The very best costumes I’ve ever seen have always been ones that people made themselves. There was the couple that we met at a party once who were dressed as contestants on that old Nickelodeon show Double Dare, complete with safety goggles and buckets of slime strapped to their heads. (If you’ve seen the show, you know what I’m talking about!). Or the guy I saw walking in the NYC Halloween Parade back in the 1990s who wore an entire shower stall around his body and screamed every time someone pulled the shower curtain open, like Janet Leigh in the classic Hitchcock film PSYCHO. Or my friend whose son wore a Mater costume (from the movie CARS) that was made entirely from cardboard boxes and looked amazing.
So many store-bought costumes now are fashioned from plastic or other unrecyclable materials. Making your own is a way you can ensure that no one else will look exactly like you. It is also a nice way to upcycle items that would otherwise be going straight to the landfill. And you don’t have to invest a ton of money or time into it!
Last Halloween, I made my own No-Sew Princess Leia costume out of an old bedsheet we had in the garage and some leftover items from my wrapping box. It was cheap and easy to make, and was a big hit on Halloween. I wrote a DIY tutorial about it for the Orange County Moms Blog if you’d like to read it (click here)!
Yes, my son is wearing a store-bought costume. Sometimes, when your kid has his heart set on being a Star Wars character and you don’t know how to make a paper maché mask, you make compromises. This is real life and that is okay. But he’s gotten great use out of this costume having worn it to multiple Halloween events and then more times than I can count around the house. We bought it one size too big knowing he’d want to wear it repeatedly, and it will be handed down to another Star Wars obsessed kiddo once he outgrows it.
#2: Use Cloth Or Reusable Trick-Or-Treat Bags
Cloth and reusable bags are not just for grocery shopping. There are so many Halloween-themed reusable bags out there to choose from!
We got these Halloween-themed bags free with an order of Honest Diapers last year and the year before, and they are perfect for trick-or-treating!
Another idea for cloth Halloween bags are these cute drawstring bags made by a mom on Etsy! She’s got several Halloween designs, in addition to patterns for other holidays and themes. Be eco-friendly and support a budding mompreneur at the same time!
#3: Give Out Compostable, Teal Pumpkin-Friendly Treats
No matter how hard I try every year to avoid commercial candy, aka plastic-wrapped sugar bombs, they still find a way into our house. And that’s okay in small quantities. But I like to avoid giving these out to the trick-or-treaters that come to our house since they’re likely getting a ton of candy from other homes in our area.
Non-candy treats are also great for children with food allergies. There’s actually a movement to make Halloween more food-allergy inclusive called the Teal Pumpkin Project. If you’d like to learn more about that, click here. There’s a free printable sign at the end of this post which you can hang on your door to let trick-or-treaters know that you have non-candy treats at your house!
BONUS: You won’t have a ton of candy left over in your house that you will then just HAVE to finish off yourself after the kids go to sleep.
I found these cute wooden masks at the craft store Michaels. They were 40% off!
(By the way, I participate in the Amazon Affiliate program. So these are affiliate links below, which means that if you click on them I may receive a small commission that will have zero effect on your purchase price. You can read more about this on my Privacy Policy page.)
Here are some other plastic-free ideas for eco-friendly Halloween treats:
Wooden Pumpkin Spin Tops – These were a big hit when we passed them out at a Trunk-Or-Treat party last year! (See photo below)
Halloween Pencils – Cute designs. I love that these come in a cardboard container and are plastic-free!
Halloween Mini Coloring Books – Kids love coloring books. Fact.
Round Halloween Stickers – Kids love stickers. Also a fact.
Decorate-Your-Own-Pumpkin Sticker Sheets – My son got a kick out of making silly pumpkin faces with these.
Another idea is to print out Halloween-themed coloring pages and hand them out with mini crayon boxes. You can find some fun free Halloween printables by clicking here.
SIDE NOTE: Boo Chips, which are like healthy Pringles shaped like ghosts and bats are currently 50% off at Whole Foods! They’re super cute to put in lunch boxes or serve at Halloween parties!
#4: Invest In Good Quality Wooden And Metal Decorations
Though we have a good deal of Halloween decorations for our home, I didn’t buy the majority of them. We have some cute wooden signs that were hand-me-downs from my in-laws, which they’d had for decades and are still in great shape.
One thing we did buy is the festive burlap wreath pictured at the top of this post that a local mom handmade for our front door.
Here are some other ideas and tips for eco-friendly Halloween decorations!
- Gourds, dried and painted by your kids. Check out this no carve DIY tutorial from Old World New!
- Multi-colored corn, dried and with the husks pulled back but still attached – we’ve been using the same bunch for several years now!
- Cut out pumpkins from orange construction paper and bats from black paper, and hang from string with wooden clothespins.
- Carved pumpkins sprayed with peppermint essential oil mixed with water will last longer!
- Wine bottle candlesticks – click here to watch a DIY video from Ever Change Productions.
- Make a spooky witch’s kitchen from items you probably have lying around the house with this DIY tutorial from Compost and Cava.
- Halloween-ify your fireplace mantel with these zero-waste ideas also from Compost and Cava.
Do you have any eco-friendly Halloween tips to share? Please leave a comment below! Happy Haunting!
Mona
That’s amazing and so cool. I love 🎃
Jo Fitz
Some great ideas. Halloween is only just taking off in my part of the world. A handful of houses register for trick or treating and the kids go along, mostly in costumes picked up second hand. It’s a bit of fun, but I can’t imagine it going on all month long!