7 swaps to make to have a greener Halloween

As we approach this delightfully spooky season, celebrating our pagan past and all things that go bump in the night, it’s worth considering how to make shockingly easy swaps and changes to make sustainability part of your celebration.

1. How do you eat yours?

Thousands of pumpkins are bought every Halloween here in Ireland and decorated with carved-out faces. While these carvings can be scary, what is even more frightening is how these pumpkins will haunt us as they decay in landfills-producing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. There are plenty of alternatives, starting with eating your squash!

If buying, instead of carving out a face, try painting or a marker to decorate. Then, the pumpkin will remain fresh as a daisy until it’s time to get cooking on November 1.

Consider roasting the seeds and using the flesh to bulk out curries, adding them to muffins, soup, etc.

Pumpkin is an excellent source of vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium, and phosphorus. Transform this seasonal decoration into one of your five a day and reap the health benefits.

If you need to bin your pumpkin, to pop it in the brown bin, or compost it.

2. Let them eat cake!

Reduce the likelihood of individual sweet wrappers ending up all over your neighbourhood like confetti by buying a big tub of loose treats and portioning them into paper bags. Your kids can make the bags even spookier by decorating them. Better again, just offer visitors a handful from a big tub. Be warned; sweets may run out quickly if you go for this option!

The best treats of all are homemade with love, and if time allows, homebaked Halloween monster cookies or ghoulish rice krispie buns will be very well received by trick-or-treaters.

3. Put your budding artists to work

Put your children’s creative skills to work by creating decorations for the home. Can old ripped black tights become the legs of a spider stuffed with old newspaper?

By raiding the recycling bin, we can find all the materials we need to make our homes bewitching.

Set your kids the challenge of decorating, and offer token prizes for the most creative and scary artwork.

Pencils and markers that are suitable to use on glass, like Stabilo woody 3 in 1 pencils, are a great way to entertain the whole family, creating Halloween images on windows that everyone can help colour in. The only limit is your imagination! Best of all, when the season is over, the window can simply be washed clean, and the pencils can be used for the next celebration!

4. Dress to impress

There are over 1.2 million children living in Ireland. If they all get a new costume every year, that’s an inconceivable mountain of waste, most of which will be made of synthetic materials for one night’s festivities.

There are lots of options that move in the right direction towards sustainability, ideally using what you have at home already, swapping with others, buying secondhand, or buying better with a view to reusing any purchase several times.

The Toy Library is hosting a costume swap, decorations exchange and repair cafe on Sunday, October 13, 10 am—2 pm at Fitzgerald Park, Cork. Whether you have costumes to donate or just want to come pick out something new, everyone is welcome! Sign up here to attend: https://thetoylibrary.zapier.app/halloween

5. Waste not, want not

If you’ve got more treats than you know what to do with after Halloween, offer it to any of the local food banks, like Cork Penny Dinners. They welcome non-perishable packaged foods at 4 Little Hanover Street, Cork, between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. daily.

6. Go trick or treating on foot

Leave the car at home and walk around your neighbourhood when trick or treating. It really adds to the atmosphere of the night. Don’t forget high-visibility gear and torches!

7. Are you afraid of the dark?

A form of pollution that many of us are wholly unaware of is light. It is so widespread that it turns night into day in 80% of the world. Artificial light at night has a negative effect on plants, birds, insects, and other creatures-including us humans!

As the evenings get shorter in the run-up to Halloween, consider the simple and immediate ways to reduce your home’s light pollution by turning off or dimming lights. 

Consider installing motion sensors, adding dimmers, switching light bulbs to warm-coloured bulbs, or adding blackout blinds/curtains. 

Get the entire family involved in making an active effort to turn off unnecessary indoor and outdoor lighting.

Nocturnal creatures, including Halloween favourites like bats, will be most grateful for these small acts.