Sweet and Sour: Halloween’s Impact on the Environment

Imagine: it’s the night of Halloween, and you’re taking a walk down the street to meet up at your friend’s house for a Halloween party. Your shoes crush candy wrappers scattering the floor, and little kids run by, hands clutching plastic bags full of sweets. Every doorstep is lined with carved pumpkins, skeleton garlands, and light-up ghosts; every lawn is covered with tombstones and zombie hands. People walk around decked out in skulls, masks, and faux bandages, fully immersed in the whirlwind of the holiday.

Pretty great, right? Sure. But after the spooky fun, a question arises: pumpkins, costumes, candy… what happens to all that stuff? In many cases, the answer isn’t as sweet.

Take jack o’ lanterns, for example. Out of the people who buy pumpkins to carve them, over half throw them away afterward. According to Hummingbird International, 18,000 tons of pumpkins – that’s like 360 million portions of pumpkin pie – are dumped in landfills, and they release methane gas when decomposed, a greenhouse gas that’s around 20 times more harmful to the environment than CO2.

But pumpkins aren’t the only thing that end up in landfills. Every year, 35 million Halloween costumes are thrown away. Not only that, but it takes more than half of these costumes 20 to 200 years to decompose. Another problem is that, as mentioned by Commons, many costumes are made from petroleum-based plastics, which use fossil fuels, a non-renewable resource.

Along with the costumes, Halloween candy contributes to a significant portion of plastic packaging waste at 30%. A Californai recycling website says candy wrappers are often made of a mix of materials, like aluminum and plastics, and they’re pretty small. This makes them hard to separate and sort, meaning much of it can’t be recycled.

So, how can you help?

One way is to find candy that uses reusable or biodegradable packaging, or even a replacement for candy instead, like cookies or oranges with jack o’ lantern faces. You can also repurpose, recycle, or donate your costumes, as less thrown away means less textile waste. Same idea for pumpkins: instead of chucking them, try composting them, cooking them, or feeding them to pets.

And remember, these aren’t the only actions you can take to make a change. Being eco-conscious starts with little things like this, but staying eco-conscious takes a little more effort. Those were just a few ways you and your community can help out the environment… so that next Halloween isn’t such a scare.