Halloween Brainstorm
I wanted to post this in advance of Halloween, because at this point, I don't have any good ideas. This will be our first Halloween in a house, which means we may actually get trick-or-treaters. In the spirit of this blog, I am trying to think of treats that can be given out to kids that don't create any waste.
Can you even begin to imagine how much garbage is produced just for Halloween? Specifically, almost every type of little candy comes individually wrapped in some sort of plastic wrapper. Seriously... so much garbage. So much PLASTIC garbage. And you know that maybe 0.001% of that is going to be successfully recycled (and that's being generous). I also think a good portion of it ends up thrown on the ground, down our storm drains, and in our river. Not good.
But what are the alternatives? We could give kids bulk unwrapped candy (candy corn, smarties, pretzels, whatever you can get in the bulk bins), but do kids really want to eat loose candy from an unknown source? And will their parents let them? We're living in a pretty paranoid society where people feel that wrappers make food safe. We could give them fruit, but then we're just that house that gives out fruit when all the kids want is candy. We could give out homemade treats, but I still don't know how we could give those out without wrapping them in something, and without the parents throwing them out.
The best that I can think of right now is to focus on treats that come in cardboard packages. Maybe mini boxes of smarties and/or raisins (that's the only one I can think of right now)... I'm pretty sure that at some point in the past, I have purchased a box of organic candies wrapped in bio-degradable packaging. Not ideal, but still better than plastic.
One website suggested giving kids handfuls of pennies, though I'm not sure what I think of this.
I'm appealing to you, folks! Have any ideas? How can we get through Halloween without contributing a mountain of trash to our landfills?
Can you even begin to imagine how much garbage is produced just for Halloween? Specifically, almost every type of little candy comes individually wrapped in some sort of plastic wrapper. Seriously... so much garbage. So much PLASTIC garbage. And you know that maybe 0.001% of that is going to be successfully recycled (and that's being generous). I also think a good portion of it ends up thrown on the ground, down our storm drains, and in our river. Not good.
But what are the alternatives? We could give kids bulk unwrapped candy (candy corn, smarties, pretzels, whatever you can get in the bulk bins), but do kids really want to eat loose candy from an unknown source? And will their parents let them? We're living in a pretty paranoid society where people feel that wrappers make food safe. We could give them fruit, but then we're just that house that gives out fruit when all the kids want is candy. We could give out homemade treats, but I still don't know how we could give those out without wrapping them in something, and without the parents throwing them out.
The best that I can think of right now is to focus on treats that come in cardboard packages. Maybe mini boxes of smarties and/or raisins (that's the only one I can think of right now)... I'm pretty sure that at some point in the past, I have purchased a box of organic candies wrapped in bio-degradable packaging. Not ideal, but still better than plastic.
One website suggested giving kids handfuls of pennies, though I'm not sure what I think of this.
I'm appealing to you, folks! Have any ideas? How can we get through Halloween without contributing a mountain of trash to our landfills?
Comments
Post a Comment