Happy Halloween Everyone!!
Today is October 31st, the day in which hundreds of thousands of people all across the nation dress up in costume to partake in the american cultural event of Halloween. Outfits, makeup, decorations, and candy populate the shelves of pop up Halloween stores, drug stores, and Party Stores. With wrappers from candy, new costumes being produced and rapidly thrown away, and harsh chemicals from makeup and hair-spray being released into the environment, Halloween sounds more like an orange holiday than a “green” one! However, due to the day’s immense popularity, a multitude of environmentally friendly companies have begun catering to Halloween enthusiasts, in order to make it a simultaneously sustainable and scary celebration.
Costumes:
Sarah’s Silks– Great alternative for kids costumes! Options rage from fairies to wizard dress-ups, all made from the sustainable and renewable resource material, silk. Additionally, the dyes employed to color the fabrics are environmentally friendly, non toxic, and do not contain any heavy metals. The costumes are also “family made” and thus do not come from large scale factories that let off huge amounts of air and water pollution.
Makeup:
Terra Firma Cosmetics- Gives an alternative to those toxin filled halloween face-paint! Not only will you prevent facial breakouts from applying the harsh chemicals contained in commercial makeups into your pores, but you will also be helping the environment, as their cosmetics are composed of all natural ingredients. Terra Firma is now offering a special Halloween face-paint and makeup kit, which includes colors like white, green, and blue, as well as sustainable “fake blood,” an applicator kit and a carrying bag!
Decorations:
Kaspa Lamps- These ghost lamps appear like their floating and give off an eerie and haunting vibe, all the while NOT USING ELECTRICITY!!! The lamp is made of Phosphor, which is a glow in the dark material, as well as other light absorbing components that allow the light to stay on with out electricity for 20 minutes in the dark!
Craftspo- Provides a variety of craft ideas to chose from using materials you already have laying around your house! The more you reuse, the less waste you generate! Examples of crafts featured for halloween include, making your own scare-themed votives that give off an eerie yellow light using mason jars, “spirit jugs” that reuse old milk cartons to create incandescent ghosts, and a “Bottle of Boos” which reuses an old wine bottle to create an illuminated, haunting addition to your Halloween decor!
Candy
Endangered Species Chocolate- The candies from this company are organic, environmentally transparent, use ethically grown cocoa beans, are wrapped in sustainable packaging as the ink is water-based, and lastly are produced in an eco-friendly building as deemed by their LEED certification.
Cadbury– This company now sources 50% of their chocolate from sustainable sources as of 2010, and has vowed to cut its climate footprint by half by 2020. The environmental efforts of the very popular candy company should be encouraged so perhaps hand out some of these chocolates to your trick or treaters!
Written by Julie Elliot, Class of 2015