Avoid the recycling nightmare of Halloween
A recent survey has confirmed what everyone probably knew already – Halloween is getting bigger and more popular every year in the UK.
The celebration of Halloween has been going on for hundreds of years in Christian culture, with the name coming from All Hallows’ Eve, being the day before the holy day of All Hallows’ Day on 1 November. But it is only in recent decades that the event has started to be celebrated by all people, religious or not, and many of our current traditions, such as ‘trick or treat’, have been borrowed from the USA.
Halloween 2025 is estimated to be celebrated by 55% of the UK population, up from 48% just last year. For many it is a great occasion to dress up, have fun and eat too many sweets. But for the recycling sector, Halloween brings several challenges. Put simply, facts about waste during Halloween make for scary reading…
Unfortunately, Halloween comes at a cost, not just to people’s pockets, but to the environment as well. The average spend on spooky costumes is estimated at around £31 this year, and of these new costumes a staggering 7 million are expected to be discarded after the event, with 90% of people buying a new costume every year.
To make the situation even worse, studies have shown that more than 80% of Halloween costumes sold by the top retailers in the UK are made from plastics, giving the event a huge plastic-waste imprint. Without clear labelling for clothing, many purchasers are still unaware that materials such as polyester are a type of plastic.
And it’s not just about the costumes. The Halloween tradition of carving and decorating a pumpkin (once again, borrowed from the USA), results in around 18,000 tonnes of pumpkin waste ending up in household waste bins across the UK, rather than being eaten, composted or put in food waste bins. Not only is this an enormous waste of food (pumpkin soup is amazing by the way!), but it’s also damaging to the environment if this waste ends up at landfill to rot away and produce methane, a greenhouse gas, which is 25 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Reduce your environmental impact this Halloween
Luckily, there are a number of ways to celebrate in a sustainable way.
For example, there is a growing trend of Halloween ‘swap shops’ popping up around the UK during October, enabling parents to cut back on costs by exchanging their children’s fancy dress costumes. These are often organised by local authorities and hosted in libraries, so it’s well worth a quick search before heading to the shops.
Charity shops are also a useful source of good value, second-hand outfits, or many people ‘re-purpose’ existing outfits to make them seem like new. If you do head to the shops for a new outfit, try and buy costumes that are not made of polymers and opt instead for more sustainable materials.
Instead of purchasing plastic masks, why not try face painting instead, which is much more fun and challenges your creativity. An existing bucket or container can be decorated, negating the need to purchase a plastic disposable bucket for collecting a trick or treat sweetie haul.
Talking of sweet hauls, these will inevitably come covered in plastic wrapping. The good news is that although these kinds of plastic can’t usually be collected in recycling bins from your home, sweet wrappers are now recycled alongside plastic bags and wrapping at many supermarkets across the country. These can be easily found using a recycling locator: https://www.recyclenow.com/recycling-locator
So, the good news is that it is possible to celebrate Halloween without impacting our recycling rates by making a few different decisions. With that, everyone at Casepak wishes you a special, scary and sustainable All Hallows’ Eve!