More Green Halloween Tips

Green Halloween Tips 4,5 and 6

Green Halloween Tip 4: Walk, Don’t Drive
Rather than drive to other neighborhoods to take the kids trick-or-treating, stick close to home this Halloween and walk from house to house to reduce fuel consumption and air pollution.
If you are attending a Halloween party, use public transportation or ride your bicycle.
If traveling by car is really the only way to join in Halloween fun with your family or friends, try carpooling.

Green Halloween Tip 5: Make Your Halloween Party Eco-Friendly
Host a Halloween party that features organic, locally grown pumpkins for carving, apples for bobbing, and other pesticide-free, locally grown foods appropriate to the holiday and the harvest season. Organic produce is now widely available at many grocery stores as well as farmers’ markets and stores specializing in organic food.

Once the jack-o-lanterns have been carved and the games have ended, the apples and pumpkins can be used in pies, soups, or other dishes. You can also roast the pumpkin seeds and serve them to your guests as a special Halloween treat.

Use dishes, cutlery, napkins and tablecloths that can be washed and reused instead of disposable plastic and paper tableware.

Use recycled and recyclable materials to create your Halloween decorations. Bed sheets hung from the ceiling or tree branches make great ghosts, for example, and can be taken down, laundered, and returned to the linen closet when Halloween is over.

Green Halloween Tip 6: Reuse and Recycle
If you don’t already compost, Halloween is a great time to start. You can add post-Halloween jack-o-lanterns to your compost bin, along with fallen leaves, food scraps, and other organic, biodegradable yard and household waste.

Compost creates excellent soil for your garden. You might even use the compost from your backyard bin to help grow the pumpkins that will become next year’s jack-o-lanterns and pumpkin pies.

If you are interested in composting, your local hardware store, garden center, county extension service, or waste disposal agency should be able to help you get started.

Instead of throwing away your Halloween decorations each year, store and reuse them year after year, just as you do decorations for many other holidays, such as Christmas and Hanukkah.