Zero-Waste Living · October 2026
A Less Trashy Halloween
What to do about the candy, the costumes, and the decorations. No lecture. Just practical tips.
Halloween is one of the most fun holidays of the year. It is also one of the most wasteful. Forty million pounds of candy wrapper waste. Billions spent on costumes worn exactly once. Plastic decorations used for a weekend and then landfilled for centuries. None of this has to be a dealbreaker. It just means making a few different decisions. Here is how.
The Numbers
How Wasteful Is Halloween Actually?
Americans spend around $12 billion on Halloween every year. A significant chunk of that goes directly into a landfill as November arrives. The holiday has three main waste streams and each one has a different solution.
The Three Waste Streams Worth Knowing About
- Candy wrappers: roughly 41 million pounds of trick-or-treater trash is generated in the US each Halloween. Almost none of the candy wrappers are recyclable because the multi-layer foil and plastic film construction cannot be processed by standard recycling facilities.
- Costumes: the average Halloween costume is worn once and then thrown away. 83% of costume materials are oil-based plastics that shed microplastics and take centuries to break down in landfill. Americans spend $3.2 billion on costumes every year.
- Decorations: synthetic cobwebs, jack-o-lanterns, and light-up accessories bought for one weekend and discarded. The majority ends up in landfill within days of Halloween ending.
None of this means Halloween has to be a guilt trip. It means the holiday is worth approaching with a little more intention than defaulting to whatever is in a big box store in October. The good news is that the alternatives are usually more fun anyway.
The Candy Problem
What to Do About the Candy
This is the hardest part of a low-waste Halloween because the culture around trick-or-treating is deeply tied to individually wrapped candy. And honestly, we are not here to tell you to hand out raisins. Nobody wants that.
What is worth knowing is that candy wrapper waste is almost entirely unavoidable at the individual level. The wrappers are not recyclable. There is no good home solution for them. The most impactful change here happens at the purchasing level, not the disposal level.
"The candy wrapper problem is real. It is also mostly upstream. Focus your energy on costumes and decorations where individual decisions make a much bigger difference."
The Costume Problem
What to Do About the Costumes
This is where individual decisions make the biggest difference. A $45 polyester costume worn once and thrown away is one of the least sustainable purchases a person can make. And the costume industry counts on most people making that purchase every single October.
The good news is that costumes are one of the clearest cases where the secondhand model works perfectly. Unlike food or personal care products, costumes can absolutely be bought used, borrowed, rented, or made from things you already own.
Buy Secondhand
Thrift stores fill up with costumes in October. Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark, Depop and local buy-nothing groups are full of last year's costumes that were worn once. This is the easiest and cheapest option for most people.
Rent or Borrow
Costume rental shops exist in most cities and are significantly underused. Borrowing from a friend or neighbor for one night is even better. A costume you return is a costume that gets worn again.
Build From What You Own
The most creative costumes are almost always the ones assembled from things already in a closet. A white sheet. A black turtleneck. A flannel shirt and some fake blood. Constraints produce creativity.
Invest in Quality if You Buy New
If you are buying new, buy something worth keeping and wearing again. A well-made costume that lasts ten years and gets worn ten times has a fraction of the environmental cost of ten cheap ones.
What to Do With Last Year's Costume
- Try to sell on Facebook Marketplace before donating it to a thrift store or costume swap before October so someone else can use it this year.
- List it on Depop or Poshmark, or a local buy-nothing group. Halloween costumes sell fast in September and early October.
- Hold onto it. A surprising number of costume pieces come back around. The vampire cape from three years ago can be recreated into a new costume another year.
- If it is genuinely worn out, check whether any parts can be repurposed or whether the fabric can be recycled before tossing it.
The Decoration Problem
What to Do About the Decorations
Halloween decorations are the easiest category to make more sustainable because nature already does the work for you. A carved pumpkin, dried corn stalks, gourds, and fallen leaves are more visually interesting than anything sold in a plastic bag at a big box store. And they all compost when the holiday is over.
"A porch with pumpkins, gourds, and candlelight is more atmospheric than anything that comes in a plastic bag. Nature already figured out autumn."
The Easy Win
The One Trick-or-Treating Swap That Actually Matters
Most trick-or-treating bags and buckets are made from plastic. The classic orange plastic jack-o-lantern bucket is one of the most iconic Halloween images in America and one of the most unnecessary pieces of plastic the holiday generates.
A reusable bag does the job better. Holds more candy. Does not crack or break mid-route. Can be used for groceries, farmers markets, beach days, and school lunches for the other 364 days of the year.
Our Half Mesh Tote is GOTS-certified organic cotton, holds up to 35 lbs, and washes clean after a night of trick-or-treating. It is the kind of purchase that makes sense once and then keeps making sense for years.
Shop the Half Mesh Tote →The Bottom Line
You Do Not Have to Choose Between Halloween and the Planet
The goal here is not to be perfect but rather be slightly more intentional. You do not have to skip the candy, make your own costume from scratch, or decorate exclusively with nature to make a meaningful difference.
Buy the secondhand costume instead of the new one. Put out locally-sourced pumpkins instead of the plastic cobwebs. Use a reusable bag for trick-or-treating. Save and reuse last year's decorations instead of throwing them away. These are small decisions that take about as much effort as the default, and they add up across millions of households.
Halloween is supposed to be fun. It can stay that way and generate a lot less waste. Those two things are not in conflict.
Candy wrapper waste statistics from the Halloween Industry Association and the EPA. Costume spending data from the National Retail Federation. Synthetic fabric composition estimates from environmental materials research.
