How to take the shock & horror out of your
Halloween waste

Want to see something really scary? The waste that’s left after every Halloween is enough to make your head spin.
So as we gear up for our annual ghoul-fest, a pumpkin would like a quick word…

Shock! Pumpkins, now edible

Last year, when you bought your pumpkin, I bet you scooped out the insides, carved out a scary face and threw away all that lovely pumpkinny goodness, didn’t you? Most people do. 12 million pumpkins are thrown away every year in the UK and they’re a big part of the 7 million tonnes of food we throw away each year.

But here’s the thing: pumpkins aren’t just good for making scary lanterns. The insides are also good for far less horrible purposes like making soup, risotto, curry or pie, and they’re rich in minerals, vitamins and antioxidants too. You can even eat the seeds – just make sure you don’t have a seed allergy and toast them first.

You can find loads of pumpkin recipes here.

Horror! Plastic nightmares

On 31 October, the streets will be full of witches, wizards and skeletons. But scarier than all of those will be the fact that, as a 2019 survey found, around 83% of those costumes will be made of oil-based plastic likely to end up as landfill.

It would be great if this year you could buy a more sustainable costume. But if you can’t, try charity shops, reusing last year’s outfit, making your own or swapping last year’s outfit with friends so the kids have something new to wear that doesn’t leave such a big, nasty carbon footprint. It’s cheaper too!

Terror! Plastic nightmares, the sequel

Just when you though it was safe, here come the decorations, the plates and cutlery, the lanterns, the trick-or-treat bags and sweet wrappers – and chances are they’ll all be made of plastic or have a plastic coating. But with a bit of Halloween magic, you can make some of that landfill fodder disappear. Here’s how:

• Decorations: You really don’t have to buy new or buy plastic. Buy sustainable decorations. Make your own. Use last year’s. Or try a combination of all three.
• Bags: Search eco-friendly trick or treat bags for a sustainable, biodegradable alternative to plastic
• Plates and cups: Despite them being made of cardboard, lots of single use cups and plates have a waxy plastic-based coating that means they can’t be recycled. Instead, they’re like zombies, undead and around forever (or for a very long time, at least). Washable, reusable plastic is better than non-recyclable (providing you do reuse them). Regular cups and plates are best of all.
• Lanterns: Make your own awesome ghost lanterns: All you need is an old milk carton, a marker pen and a battery operated tea light which is probably already sitting in a drawer somewhere.
• Sweets: Think about how many sweets you gave out last year. Now, think about how many of those sweets were individually wrapped or packaged. It’s a particular challenge this year, because Covid and the other viruses doing the rounds at present make it more hygienic to give wrapped goodies, but all of those wrappers are going to need disposing of and that’s a massive challenge.

So how about offering boxed loose sweets (because the cardboard can be recycled) or making your own treats like cupcakes, biscuits and flapjacks?

This year let’s make Halloween as scary as ever, but the Halloween waste a lot less horrifying. Thanks.