Forget, for a moment, the concerns about all the candy most kids will be carting home from trick-or-treat tonight. Push aside, if you will, the worries about tooth decay, childhood obesity and those extended sugar highs. What about all those wrappers? Terracycle -- a company that hates waste and that has made dealing with it a quirky, funky mission -- will gladly take them off your kids' sticky little hands. The New Jersey company is known for its "brigades" in schools and at other nonprofits. These teams collect juice pouches, potato chip bags and more -- dozens of otherwise "trash" items -- and then send them to Terracycle, which pays two cents per item.

Costume: Try searching thrift stores to put together a costume using used clothing or props. This will reduce the amount of resources extracted and pollution created during the production and consumption of the product. Also, use recycled products such as cardboard or plastic bottles to create a neat homemade costume. You can also spread awareness with your costume by being something with an environmental theme like a Recycle Cop or a Mermaid hit by pollution. Visit Do Something to view a list of environmental Halloween Costumes. Be creative! Candy: The amount of candy received can add up and create a lot of garbage waste. Most candy wrappers cannot be thrown into your recycle bin, so they get thrown into the garbage. However, there is a company that does recycle candy wrappers called Terracycle. Terracycle works by mailing in your recyclables in a box and shipping it to them where you will receive a certain amount of credits towards purchasing Terracycle products or you can donate those credits in dollar amounts to your school or charity of choice. Terracycle pays for your shipping too so all you have to do is just collect the waste and you and the environment receives the benefits. Visit www.terracycle.net to learn more and find out how you can start recycling your candy wrappers!

Halloween isn't only for collecting M&M's and wearing Glee Cheerios costumes. More groups are promoting it as a teachable moment for kids to do good. --- More schools are collecting candy wrappers to send to TerraCycle, a recycling company that gives donors money for charitable use. It has received 1.2 million candy wrappers so far this year, more than double its 2010 total.

Halloween isn’t only for collecting M&M’s and wearing Glee Cheerios costumes. More groups are promoting it as a teachable moment for kids to do good. -- •More schools are collecting candy wrappers to send to TerraCycle, a recycling company that gives donors money for charitable use. It has received 1.2 million candy wrappers so far this year, more than double its 2010 total.

In addition to the typical paper, aluminum, plastic, and electronics recycling, Evergreen collects hard-to-recycle items such as pens, markers, scotch tape dispensers, glue sticks, and granola bar wrappers and sells them to TerraCycle, a company specializing in upcycling. “They take these items and make new things out of them,” she explains. “It’s a great way to help a school with fundraising.” Students take all of these lessons to heart, Deal adds. “I’ve had students tell their parents not to buy a certain product because it has too much packaging. The more we model here at school, the more we’re teaching our whole community, and that’s good for everyone.”

US-based TerraCycle was founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky. It manufactures a wide range of products from waste, and its turnover in 2010 (calendar year) was $13.3m, on which it made just under $500,000 (£324,000) pretax profit. "By using rubbish, a company keeps its costs low, enabling it to offer eco-friendly products at a competitive price while turning a profit," Szaky says. "The manufacturing process involved in upcycling tends to be less energy intensive, saving manufacturing costs. "Also key is our partnering with major corporations such as Danone, Kenco, BIC and Johnson & Johnson. This enables us to secure a consistent and reliable raw material source and helps immensely to market our products and collection programmes."

How can we enjoy treating the little ghosts, goblins and gremlins with a minimum negative environmental impact? There are two important areas to look at; the ingredients and how the candy is produced, as well as what to do with all the waste, especially all those wrappers. Here are a couple of quick ideas about the wrappers that may end up blowing down your street. One, collect the wrappers and send in to TerraCycle, who will recycle them into all manner of bags, pouches and other usable goodies with what could have otherwise ended up in the landfill. As a way to collect a few more wrappers, on Halloween evening, you can put a small recycling can on the porch so all the ghosties-on-the-go have a place to put the wrappers from the candy from the candy they couldn’t wait to get home to eat.

Are you making your Halloween clown costume from candy wrappers? Your dragon mask from drink pouches? If so, we want to see it! Enter your upcycled costume into our Monster Mash your Trash costume contest by November 4th and you could be one of four contestants to win a gift card for cool TerraCycle upcycled products. PRIZES The costume that receives the most votes will be awarded the Grand Prize, a $100 gift card to DwellSmart.com, TerraCycle’s official online retailer. TerraCycle will also award the three runners-up prizes of a $50 gift card to Dwellsmart to the remaining 3 finalists.

Kindergarten teacher Marla Fuxa coordinates the recycling effort at the school. She said she was inspired to sign up for the program when she read the back of a Capri Sun box. “I saw a notice on the back of the Capri Sun box, ‘earn money for your school,’ and I just thought, ‘Wow — how?’” Fuxa said. She checked it out and learned about the TerraCycle company, which even pays shipping costs for the drink pouches it uses.