Dear Recycling Bins - How Can I Recycle More This Halloween?

Dear Recycling Bins, We put on a great Halloween party every year for our family and friends. However, I’ve been reading about how wasteful and bad for the environment it can all be. How can I improve my Halloween recycling or reuse things from the party to reduce our impact on the planet?

Thank you for your question. Yes, Halloween is becoming an ever bigger event so there’s a lot of potential for waste. However, we do have some great tips on how you can recycle more this Halloween!

Pumpkins

As well as using your leftovers in delicious recipes, you can compost them in a compost bin. If you don’t have one, why not try trench composting? Dig out a trench about 12 inches deep. Chop up your pumpkin and drop it in. You can compost other organic kitchen waste in a composting trench too. Add vegetable peels, apple core, tea bags, and more.

Each time you add a layer of organic waste to the trench, cover it with a layer of soil. Keep going until the trench is full, and leave everything to rot. The nutrients will nourish the soil so come sowing time, your new plants will flourish.

Halloween costumes

A great way to improve your Halloween recycling is by taking your old costumes to a clothing bank. You can also sell them or give them away to a charity shop. Even if the costume isn’t in good condition, the charity shop can sell them as rags and make some cash.

Decorations

Hopefully, you’ve been incredibly eco-friendly and made your own decorations, but if you haven’t, here’s what to do. If you’ve got plastic decorations, either keep them for next year, sell them, or donate them. There’s always a community centre or school that will welcome extra decorations for Halloween events.

If you have broken plastic decorations, you often can't recycle them. Many of these are hard plastics or mixed materials and they should go in your household waste bin.

What about that scary plastic ghost decoration that lights up? Well, anything with batteries is e-Waste. According to the law, it must be disposed of properly at a dedicated local waste site. As for the batteries themselves, don’t leave them inside of decorations as they can leak. Keep dead batteries to one side, maybe in a handy battery recycling bin. Then take them to a battery collection point or a dedicated waste site. Many local supermarkets now have collection points for different types of batteries.

Other party items made from paper and card

If you want to improve your Halloween recycling, you’re probably thinking that it's okay if everything you buy is made from paper or cards. Then it’s easy to recycle, right? Not always.

Items made from paper and cards often have staples, glitter, glue, and all sorts of other weird and wonderful embellishments. Sometimes these things do render something unrecyclable and you should put it in your general waste bin.

If you’re really determined to recycle more this Halloween however, try this. Whatever you’re trying to rescue, separate the different types of materials. Then check on your local authority’s website to see what you can and can’t put into your recycling bin.

Yes, this does take a bit of effort. But when it comes to helping the environment, the smallest things can make a difference. We hope we’ve helped you see how you can recycle more this Halloween! For more interesting articles on recycling and reducing your waste, check out the rest of our blog.