Mumbler Sarah has kindly put together a guest blog with some ideas for how you can have a more eco-friendly Halloween this year.
Halloween has become more and more popular and is now the UK’s third biggest commercial event. With that in mind, there are many ways that the date can become sustainable and after a little research here are some ideas:
1. Make food from pumpkins – with the rise in popularity of having pumpkins as decorations a truly spectacular 18.000 tonnes of pumpkin is thrown away every year with only 33% of people making some kind of pumpkin dish from carving leftovers. Many people think the pumpkins grown are inedible but in fact that isn’t the case and so why not make some pumpkin soup or pumpkin pie? The pumpkin seeds can also be roasted and make a delicious snack Last year we made some amazing ghoulishly gruesome giant faces from the remnants of overgrown marrows in the veg patch which had been too damaged by slugs to eat.
This is also an opportunity to shop local, East ANglia is a great place to be to buy a pumpkin and the closer it is the lower the food miles. Pumpkin patches are listed on the Mumbler website HERE.
2. Reduce, Reuse and recycle freakishly fabulous outfits
Pinterest is your friend when it comes to making Halloween costumes but with busy lives many of us don’t have time to make from scratch and its easy to buy from the supermarkets or online. Why not visit the charity shop or see if you can do some swaps at school? Our bundle of spooky dressing up clothes was bought years ago for a few pounds and last year we gave the outgrown items to friends with younger children. This year we are going out for the first time to a Halloween event and the kids have decided that we will be Meg, Mog and Owl – youngest is a witch and the oldest has requested a cat out fit – given she has black leggings and jumpers I will make a tail from an old pair of tights and stick some ears on a headband, with a little face paint for her nose and whiskers – it’s all sorted for a few pounds. I also have a brown jumper I will stick some feathers on!
3. Cut down on plastic
Paper mache buckets
Halloween decorations can easily be reused year on year however this year we are trick or treating for the first time ever and we have opted out of plastic tubs to stash our treats and instead decided to make some paper mache buckets. We have used the Red ted art recipe for flour based glue which means that with the eco paints we will be able to completely recycle our ‘buckets’. I have made a pumpkin, ‘Meg’ has a cauldron and ‘Mog’ has a mouse. These were surprisingly easy to make and kept us entertained post school for several afternoons. The added bonus being that the balloon inside can be blown to a more reasonable size than the giant sweet buckets sold in the shop – particularly important if you have children like mine who turn into absolute terrors when sugar is added!
Milk jug spoooky laterns
We have also been saving our milk cartons to turn into spooky lights with the help of our solar lights from the garden and a few battery operated tealights (**do not use real candles in a plastic jug!)
Palm Oil
Unfortunately palm oil is in quite a lot of sweets – and the production of palm oil is having a devastating impact on tropical rainforests and the animals that live there such as Orangutans. We can help by buying sweet and chocolates that are made using sustainable palm oil, which reduces the impacts on these animals so please keep an look out for the RSPO logo or for some idea on which foods are sustainable or not have a gander at the Rainforest Foundations 2016 Palm Oil Guide.
If you have any other ideas, let us know HERE and we can add them on!
