Eco friendly Halloween (again)

I'm trying to get over my issues with consumerism connected with holidays and I figure the best thing I can do is to encourage others to celebrate in the most eco friendly way possible. So, this is my follow up Halloween post... this time with less ranting and a few more good ideas.

I have come across a lot of great info to share about being eco friendly at Halloween time.

Here are some good basic tips for an eco friendly Halloween from Earth 911.

Check out some great ideas for eco themed costumes. I was considering one for myself, but I'm already enough of a freak about this stuff that I think I'll go for something more "normal" (made from current or borrowed items of course).

Here are a few ideas for DIY costumes, they are for adults but ideas can be altered for kids. The options for DIY kids costumes didn't seem as exciting to me.

This blog post on nature moms blog has some great tips for all things Halloween, with really good suggestions for better candy to give away. I would feel better if my kids got stuff like that when they went trick or treating.

And I know I implied that I was going to be more positive and everything, but PLEASE PLEASE read about why we need to make informed decisions when buying candy, and why buying fair trade chocolate is so important.

As for trick or treat bags, when we were kids we just used pillow cases. I think party we wanted to get as much candy as possible, but it certainly was an easy and eco friendly solution. Nowadays, people buy those plastic pumpkin buckets and other plastic candy holding things - do they buy them new every year? I don't understand why they would... anyhow, most of you know about my love for chicobags, and it just so happened that we were selling their new halloween bags at our co-op. I know I didn't need to, but I bought one for each kid as a treat. The cool thing about them is that they can be added to our bag collection and/or the kids can keep them on hand for when they need an extra bag for school or sports stuff. I do like them to keep a chicobag in their backpacks for that reason, but I think over the summer they stopped carrying one. Now they will have one again (after Halloween).
One of the cool thing about buying these particular bags is that 10% of the sale of each bag will go to Green Halloween. And while I was checking out their website, I found even more good ideas for what to pass out on Halloween. if you check no other links on this blog post, at least look at this one.

So, dress up and have fun this Halloween... but think before you buy!