With auburn leaves on lawns, bats and witches adorning classroom windows and cheap sugary chocolates on every office lunchroom table, Halloween is thick as fog in the air. Last-minute costuming and treat purchases are spooking up cash registers everywhere.
The aftermath of Halloween did not use to include streets and garbage cans littered with plastic, but the present reality is haunting. Treat packaging has trended toward scary and lightweight crinkly plastic, and costumes toward cheap and synthetic masks and makeup.
But it is not too late to bring back the friendly ghosts of All Hallows’ Eve and aim for less waste.
If you’re a last-minute treats kind of household, skip the plastic-wrapped options and look for those wrapped in boxboard, paper or tinfoil. The bulk-food section can be a great place to find alternative options that parents, children and the planet will enjoy. You can even think outside of the snack idea, and parents may bless you for it.
If you don’t have many children knocking on your door, what about gifting something simple and handmade (not food, they may have to toss it)? Or, gift plastic-free school supplies such as colourful pencils, cute erasers, thrift store finds, succulent plant cuttings, beeswax candles (if age appropriate), or, heck, even coins for their piggy banks. Foil-wrapped chocolate coins would likely also be well-received.
When single-use crinkly plastic snack packaging does come into your life, then you’ll be happy to know it is now accepted in a new recycling stream available at all local depots.
Do you think Halloween is too focused on treats? Maybe this year you can opt to entertain your little visitors by taking time to decorate your staircase, dress up in costume and even tell them funny jokes. They’ll remember you more than what you tossed in their treat bucket.
Once the trick-or-treating is done, but before the carved pumpkin on your front porch becomes even scarier, feed it to the soil, if you have a backyard composter. If not, you can choose an even higher end use for the pumpkin by diverting it for animal feed on Friday, November 2.
Each year, a local farmer has been picking up our ghoulish orange waste (wax and toothpicks removed) at Town Centre Recycling Depot and putting it back into the food chain. Those of you who miss this event can still take advantage of the community compost pilot program also ongoing at the depot.
The trick this Halloween is to find ways to treat the planet.
Let’s Talk Trash is qathet Regional District’s waste-reduction education program.
