Living Green: Loving Halloween but hating the waste
Include USA Zero Waste Boxes
It’s Halloween weekend, and no doubt a lot of you are headed off to a party, parade or some other costume-themed event this weekend — not to mention the actual trick-or-treating day on Monday. Halloween is big business these days, with Americans spending more than $6.9 billion last year on costumes, candy, decorations and such, or an average of $74 per person. That’s got the potential for a lot of waste, trash and excess.
I’ve written before on reducing your Halloween waste, but here I am doing it again, since I’ve run across a couple of brilliant new ideas.
• One problem with those fun-sized candies is that just about all of them are encased in wrappers made from mixed materials, which are notoriously hard to recycle.
But here’s a thought: Terracycle, the company that has become a global leader in recycling oddball items, has greatly expanded its programs of late. It’s now offering Zero Waste Boxes specifically for candy and snack wrappers.
Go to zerowasteboxes.terracycle.com and you can order a Zero Waste Box for this need. Then you load up the box and ship it to the company, and they’ll handle the wrapper recycling.
The cost of the box includes the shipping fee, and the least expensive box is $85. If this isn’t within your budget, consider splitting the cost with neighbors, family, friends or workmates. Also be sure to check out the many, many Zero Waste Boxes for different types of recyclables — from action figures and art supplies to vinyl siding and water filters.