Just as the dust settles from the hustle of end-of-summer and back-to-school, it’s already a week into October. This is when the year-end holidays start, beginning with Halloween. A long way from its pagan roots, it’s become standard to celebrate with bags of candy, new costumes, pounds of pumpkins and deluxe decorations, brands and retailers driving this by making it easy and affordable to buy seasonal goods.
Between all the scary movies, haunted houses, and creepy costumes that pop up throughout the Halloween season, it’s easy to miss the season’s real-life fright: The money levitating out of our wallets and right into our landfills. American households are likely to spend over $85 on average celebrating Halloween this year — sadly many of those dollars will go toward decorations, costumes, and candy that head straight to a landfill on November 1st.
Even if you hand out eco-friendly candy, chances are you or your kids will receive tons of traditional candy wrappers.
Traditional candy wrappers are rather difficult to recycle because of the “size, weight, and material mixture.” One solution is to recycle these little wrappers in bulk.
“Everything is technically recyclable, but most products and packaging, including candy and snack wrappers, are not accepted by public recycling programs. This is because in the current recycling system, most facilities cannot handle them. Thus, the wrappers are sent to landfill, where they can take years to break down.” Lauren Taylor | Global Vice President, Creative & Communications, TerraCycle