Halloween is the holiday where people love to celebrate with spooky decorations and costumes. What’s really frightening about Halloween, however, is the volume of Halloween costumes that get thrown away. For people interested in reducing waste headed to the landfill, below is a list of creative ways to have a scary costume but not a scary impact on the environment.
Recycling Your Halloween Costumes
About 71 percent of consumers this year plan to purchase Halloween costumes, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). In a recent press release, the NRF said this year they expect about $4.3 billion to be spent on costumes for kids, adults, and pets. Experts estimate that about 35 million Halloween costumes are tossed out in the U.S. each year. Most of those are pre-packaged single-use plastic items, and the public interest group CALPIRG notes on their website that about four in ten of those are worn only one time. Community groups and environmental organizations recommend some of these approaches to celebrate a more eco-friendly Halloween.
Don’t buy a brand-new, single-use Halloween costume from a store or website, instead:
- Participate in or organize a costume swap in your community. Type “Halloween swap near me” in your search engine to find a local event. Or arrange a time and place at your school or neighborhood for people to bring old costumes and exchange them for different ones.
- Look for second-hand costumes. A nearby thrift store is a great place to start, but there are online resources as well. ThredUp, eBay, and Poshmark are a few online sites that sell secondhand clothing and accessories. People sell used costumes on Facebook Marketplace. Goodwill online is a great source of secondhand Halloween garb, at goodwill.org/Halloween.
- Repurpose items in your closet to create a costume. Jeans, a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat make a perfect western ensemble. A black and white striped shirt and a beret will make you a mime. Put on a Hawaiian shirt, carry a map, and you can be a tourist.
- Type “DIY Halloween Costumes” in your search engine to find a treasure trove of do-it-yourself costume ideas for children, adults and pets. Ideas online can be as simple or complex as you like. Children usually enjoy creating their own unique costumes.
- Create a costume from recyclable products. Use cardboard boxes, tin foil, milk jugs and other recyclable household items to design something unique. When you are done with your homemade costume, you can put the components in the recycling bin.
- When Halloween is over, if you don’t want to save your costume, donate it to an organization. For children’s costumes, check pediatric hospitals or area schools. Offer it to family or friends or bring it to a buy/sell/swap event. You can always take it to a thrift store where someone can purchase it next year.
So, whether you reuse, swap, borrow, share, rent, thrift, or donate your Halloween costume, the trick is not to put it in the trash, and the treat will be less landfill waste.
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