Don’t spook mother nature on Halloween. Halloween can be lots of fun, but it’s also a time when you can either trick or treat Mother Nature.
These hacks will help you treat the Earth right on this spooky night. Putting together a green Halloween is as easy as an orange and black one. Download your FREE Halloween spice & all things nice!!!
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” – L.M. Montgomery
Halloween Hacks
Dress down
- Rather than buy a new costume you (or your child) will only wear once and throw away, make one out of clothes and fabrics you already have.
Bag it
- Send your kids out to collect their candy with reusable buckets, canvas bags or pillowcases.
Redecorate
- Keep Halloween decorations from year to year so you don’t need to buy new ones each season.
Recycle
- Once Halloween is over, recycle your pumpkins, the straw you used to build scarecrows and any other organic material by composting it.
- The compost can be used as fertilizer for your garden.
“There is magic in the night when pumpkins glow by moonlight.”
Teach your children
- Urge your children to dispose of their candy wrappers in their bags or in trash cans rather than on the street.
Keep it simple
- When you’re buying treats to give out, choose items that come in a minimum amount of packaging. Some folks skip the candy altogether in favour of useable treats like pencils, pens, funky erasers and even nickels!
Article Provided By: Earth Share
Consumers are expected to spend $3.12 billion on candy, costumes and other Halloween goodies this year, according to a survey conducted by BIG research for the National Retail Federation. That’s a big pile of candy corn. It’s also a lot of crumpled candy wrappers, paper party props and plastic political masks in the trash the very next day. So this Halloween, why not think green?
Putting together a green Halloween is as easy as an orange and black one.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
- 1. E-mail party invites rather than snail-mail them.
- Free e-mail greetings abound online. “Talking” and/or “dancing” ghosts, ghouls, mummies and more are there for the taking at cyber card shops postcards.org/postcards, greetingsdepot.com and e-cards.com.
- The best pumpkin card patch this year has to be castlemountains.com, which features 96 animated cards, some with short plots or story lines.
- Witches on brooms warn revellers not to drink and drive.
- Party invites come with electronic pumpkin piñata games.
- For retro-themed parties, consider vintage postcards at Penny Postcards or Antique Halloween postcards.
- There’s no flash but the illustrations are spectacular.
- Kids also can carve out their own party invites at BillyBear4Kids.com.
2. Serve healthy and seasonal foods.
- The options are endless.
- Remember pumpkins are not just decorative items.
- The tender meat of the seasonal gourd can be pureed for soups, mashed for pies or spiced up for a main entrée, such as an Indian curry.
- Healthy recipes for all things pumpkin are posted at Vegweb, from vegetarian pumpkin chili to “Stroke of Midnight” pumpkin bread.
- Recipes for the sweet squash are also plentiful at epicurious.com/recipes.
- Serious home chefs might consider whipping up some pumpkin pesto or pumpkin flan with pumpkin seed praline.
- Apples also are at their best this time of year.
- So make use of the crunchy fruit.
- Fill party bowls with several varieties of fresh apples, from tart Pippins to sweet Spartans.
- Serve cider hot or cold.
- Bake a few apples for healthy, tasty dessert.
- 3. Buy pumpkins, apples and other seasonal items from a farmer’s market.
- Produce bought at farmers’ market will not only taste better but saves energy.
- “Most foods travel an average of 1,300 miles before reaching us, burning large amounts of fossil fuels,”
- Buying produce directly from the farmer also cuts out the “middleman” and increases the farmers cut or share of the profits.
“Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere.”
—Charles M. Schulz, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”
- 4. Make use of all pumpkin parts.
- After carving a pumpkin, make sure to save the seeds.
- Bake them and serve them to party guests or feed them to our fine feathered friends, the birds.
- There’s no problem putting pumpkin seeds out for birds, wet or dry, confirms Dr. Ellen Dierenfeld, a nutritionist at the Saint Louis Zoo, which accepts pumpkin donations after Halloween to feed to the animals as a seasonal treat.
If possible, bury or compost the carcass.
Check out pumpkin the burial rituals at pumpkin craving 101, to “lay your pumpkin to rest with love and dignity.”
- 5. Use re-usable plates, cups, utensils, napkins and tablecloths.
- Paper party goods can be expensive and just add more clutter to our nation’s landfills.
- Look for re-usable party props at house ware shops and dollar stores.
“The farther we’ve gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we’ve come to need Halloween.”
—Paula Guran
6. Make your own costume or buy one at a second-hand shop.
- An old sheet still makes a great ghost.
- Just make sure that the sheet cost less than a commercial ghost costume.
- Many boomers also have some hippie clothes stashed somewhere.
- Find them and let your teenager be a part of the Woodstock generation without living through all that rain and mud!
Can’t find anything suitable in the house?
Use Goodwill’s online store locator to find a thrift store near you or shop at the online auction
- 7. Give out healthy treats.
- Finding nutritional treats has to be one of Halloween’s challenges.
- But with some serious thought, it can be done.
- Some ideas that come to mind include:
- Hand out individual microwave popcorn packs.
- Newman’s Own Organic has three varieties of organic popcorn — butter, light butter and no butter/no salt.
“Have you come to sing pumpkin carols?”
— Linus (It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown)
- Pick up some honey sticks or fruit leather at health food stores or tea shops.
- Stash tea sells honey sticks in bulk at its Web site. Fruit leather is available in bulk at Stretch Island Fruit Leather.
- 8. Instead of using paper or plastic disposable bags to collect treats, use or buy a recyclable bag.
- Be creative.
- Make use of old straw baskets or an old metal pot with a handle.
- Exceptionally cute “commercial” totes are available
- 9. Teach your children well.
- Teach them not to litter.
- Tell them pumpkin jokes.
- My favourite’s culled from the Web include:
What’s the ratio of a pumpkin’s circumference to its diameter? Pumpkin Pi
How do you mend a broken Jack-O-Lantern?
With a pumpkin patch
What is a pumpkin’s favourite sport?
Squash
10. Experience nature.
- Visit a pumpkin farm.
“Magic is really very simple, all you’ve got to do is want something and then let yourself have it.” – Aggie Cromwell (Halloweentown)
- Pick fresh apples.
- Take a long walk outside.
- Look up at the sky.
- Notice the moon.
“There is something haunting in the light of the moon.” – Joseph Conrad
Remember, it’s Halloween.
Written by Teri Goldberg StopGlobalWarming.org
While you’re here, do you want to subscribe to my weekly love letter?
No SPAM ever! Read the privacy policy