How Halloween waste is polluting the earth and what we can do about it.
By Anne Kuckertz
Halloween is fast approaching and with it comes last minutes costume planning and trips to the store for candy. If you live in a community that celebrates Halloween, you’ve probably spent the last few weeks walking amongst plastic tombstones and bushes adorned with fake spider webs. But have you ever pondered where all the stuff goes on November 1st after all the kiddos have retreated to their homes to hibernate in candy induced comas?
Most of it will end up in landfills and polluting our oceans. Now, you might be thinking, it’s just one day, how bad for the earth can it really be? Unfortunately, a report compiled by the environmental charity Hubbub estimates that 2000 tons of plastic is made from fast fashion Halloween costumes in the UK alone. And every year seven million outfits are thrown away, again, that is just in the UK. These cast away costumes are seldom made of more earth friendly materials like cotton. Around eighty three percent of Halloween garb is created using material that is oil based (aka plastic), most commonly polyester.
Since fabrics like polyester are made using crude oil, they have double the carbon footprint of cotton. While production of a cotton t shirt creates 2.1 kg of CO2, one made from polyester generates 5.5 kg.
Halloween costumes are not just carbon intensive to be created, but carbon heavy to be destroyed as well. This is due to the complexity of materials we are using. Often a shirt from Target will be a polyester cotton blend which means that in order to be recycled, the cotton fibers must first be separated from the polyester fibers. One such process is called mechanical fiber recycling which basically uses a giant paper shredder for fabrics which then pulls the fibers apart to create shorter ones. The problem is that shorter fibers are not as strong as longer ones and therefore can’t be used again to produce clothing. They are instead only suitable for thermal and noise insulation as well as carpet.
But it’s not the bumble bee and sexy cat costumes that are the only point of concern. The individually wrapped chocolates that are causing those kiddos’ candy comas are scary for the environment as well. In 2019 Americans bought around 600 million pounds of Halloween candy. Think of how many Kit Kats and Crunch wrappers have made their way to the ocean or the landfill by now.
The reason that many candy wrappers contribute so much waste is because they are especially tricky to recycle. Their size, for one, does not make them conducive to processing in industrial plants meant for much larger items such as bottles and packaging. The actual materials in them make them difficult to recycle as well. Much like Halloween costumes, candy wrappers are usually made from a mix of materials. This might include aluminum, plastic, and paper which makes breaking them down and sorting the resultant materials a spooky task for most waste disposal services.
Unlike the costume waste which at least has some textile recycling plants that consumers could send their costumes to, wrappers barely have any recycling infrastructure. In the United States there is basically only one company that will recycle candy wrappers. It’s called TerraCycle and the way that it works is they send you a recycling box that you fill with wrappers and send back to them. They then break down the wrappers into fibers and compost or recycle the organic material and put the plastic fibers through chemical processing. This is a step in the right direction, but a small 10 x 10 x 18 in box will cost you 113 dollars, which will not be a feasible expense for many this October.
Luckily, this year’s spooky season can be a lot less frightening for the earth, especially when it comes to costumes. A big issue with Halloween getups now is that they are worn once and thrown away. Which means the solution is easy, stop buying stuff and stop throwing it away. Reuse aspects of old costumes, work with clothes you already have, or find your costume at thrift shops. (Thrift stores sell a surprising amount of ten-dollar wedding dresses and old trench coats, so much scary potential right there.) Back in 2015 I bought a red cloak from Etsy that I have since used to be Little Red Riding Hood, a vampire, the devil, and a few other creatures. I haven’t bought anything new for a costume in six years (to be fair, that have been due to teenage laziness and not my concern for the environment, but it shows it’s possible.)
Sadly, the candy wrapper dilemma is a bit trickier. You can always send your wrappers to TerraCycle. It might help to see if your neighbors will all chip in to buy a box so that you can all send in your wrappers. But beyond that you can hand out plastic free candies like Smarties, Dots, or Hershey Kisses. You could also give out non candy treats such as earth friendly crayons, temporary tattoos, or stickers (think pediatrician’s office treasure chest.)
Although Halloween is meant to be spooky, jump scares and sticky kids provide quite enough fright without adding climate change and pollution to the fray.
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