I was just writing about Halloween party ideas for a client and realized, I never really pay much attention to the environmentality (if that were even a word) of the holiday (I use that word loosely as well…since technically Halloween isn’t a national holiday).  I started thinking about how if you go to a store, even the Good Will store; all the costumes are gone in the few short weeks before Halloween.  Seriously, I have seen racks with only one or two costumes left and although we keep our costumes in our home for years to come both as hand me downs and dress up clothes, I never realized that other people actually throw those costumes away each year.

Yes, Yes! Call me naïve.  I live in a bubble.  What can I say! But seriously, when I read the following statement on another website I was totally floored:

“Green Halloween notes that if we could just swap out about half the costumes used each year, we’d help reduce annual landfill waste by 6,250 tons (the weight of 2500 midsize cars).”

So then I started thinking about all the big retailers and they must sell millions of Halloween costumes each and every year right.  Why on earth would anyone throw away a perfectly good Halloween costume after just one use and even more to the point, why throw it away rather than pass it on.  Perhaps it came into disrepair, but I am betting there is some natural mamma out there somewhere that could use it to create the best green Halloween costume of all.

This past Halloween, my daughter wore a witch’s costume that I wore over 20 years ago that my mother had made by hand.  Her accessories included an incredibly heavy broom made entirely out of twigs and wood fashioned by her father, a purple apron made from some old fabric that I had left from the curtains of someone’s Volkswagen bus (that used to be my thing…making curtains that is) and a witches hat passed down from her second cousin in Florida about 4 years ago.  OH! Can’t forget the sparkly purple spider ring that came from who knows where…maybe a gift from the library? And we put glow stick juice in Jello and poured it into some old spice jars and added dead bugs; classic witch material.  Point is, it all came from pretty much right here in the home and she LOVED it!

But really that isn’t what I came to tell all of you about! In my discovery of the statement above I was intrigued by Green Halloween and went on a World Wide Web adventure to learn more.  I wanted to share what I found about their great annual costume swap and hope that all of you will consider a green Halloween too! Enjoy, Swap and Be Scary!!