Environment Wednesday: Halloween
I’m actually having a tough time figuring out how to make Halloween more environmentally friendly without a lot of effort, because I think that in order to make Halloween better for the environment, our society would have to undergo some fundamental shifts.
The key problem with Halloween is that the holiday involves passing out individually wrapped pieces of candy to trick or treaters, which is tremendously wasteful. The obvious solution is to pass out unwrapped foods, like freshly made baked goods, fruit, and so forth, except that this isn’t the solution. Because we live in a society where parents are afraid for their children. Even though the rate of adulterated Halloween treats historically has been extremely low, our culture of fear means that if you hand out brownies, those brownies will be thrown away, because parents are afraid.
And that really sucks. One way to approach the problem would be to have a neighborhood Halloween party, in which everyone within a specific neighborhood either agreed to trick or treat in the neighborhood, or to hold a party at a designated space, where people could bring treats. Since you presumably know your neighbors, wrapping wouldn’t be such an issue. But that kind of takes the fun out of Halloween: I actually really like the concept of this holiday, since it’s hundreds of years old, and that’s pretty cool.
Since you’re basically forced to screw the environment in the candy bowl, the best I can offer is to think about utilizing re-usable decorations if you decorate your house for Halloween, to compost your pumpkins after use, and to use costumes which can be re-used. Costume rental is one option, ensuring that your costume gets a lot of use in its lifetime, or you could use a costume which can be reworked, or sold.
Tags: Environment