Tips for a Sustainable Halloween

Updated on September 26th, 2025

AD – PR Product | Halloween is just around the corner, and if you are planning on decorating for Halloween or attending a party, here are tips and ideas on how to make the holiday more sustainable.

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Sustainable DIY and Thrifted Halloween Costumes

If you are planning on attending a Halloween party or your kids are going trick-or-treating this year, consider making or thrifting the costume instead of going out and buying a new one that is only worn once or twice. Some popular costumes for kids are:

• Wednesday Addams Costume: The costume can be made with a black dress and black socks or tights. You can braid the hair in double braids to complete the look.
• Zombie Costume: The costume can be made with worn clothing. You can also add rips and fake blood using a mixture of water, red food coloring, and flour.
• Ghost Costume: The costume can be made with a white dress, shirt and pants, or even a sheet. You can add black eyes and a mouth with a fabric marker, paint, or felt.
• Skeleton Costume: The costume can be made with black clothes and white tape in the placement of bones.
• Vampire Costume: The costume can be made with a nice dress or a nice shirt and black pants. You can use natural face paint and fake blood to give the vampire look.
• Witch Costume: The costume can be made with a black or purple dress and striped tights. You can also make a DIY witch broom from a bamboo pole, twigs, and twine, and a DIY witch hat.

These costumes can work well for adults too, and Lynn Mumbing Mejia also has some great ideas for DIY costumes, including a Pumpkin Jack-O-Lantern Costume, a Taro Boba Costume, a Scream Ghost Face Costume, and a cute Starbucks Frappuccino and Barista Couple’s Costume.

Thrifted Costumes

If you find that you are missing a clothing piece to complete the costume, you can check out the thrift store in your area, as they might just have what you are looking for at a more affordable price than buying the clothing new. Thrift stores and online secondhand marketplaces might also have Halloween costumes, and you can even do a costume swap with someone in your area if they have a costume you are looking for.

Reusable Treat Container

Instead of buying a new plastic container for trick-or-treating, your kids can use a reusable one instead. One suggestion is using a reusable tote bag, and I bought a tote bag with a spider web pattern from Flying Tiger Copenhagen last year that would work well as a treat container. You can also use a reusable shopping bag or even a pillowcase as a treat container.

Sustainable Halloween Decor

If you are decorating your own home for a party or just for fun, you do not have to go out and buy new Halloween decor. I honestly find a lot of the plastic Halloween decorations tacky, and instead, I like to focus on natural decor and decor my daughter has made.

For natural decor, you can use pumpkins from a farm near you that has pumpkins for sale or offers pumpkin picking. Also, the farmer’s market in your area might have pumpkins to buy. You can carve the larger pumpkins with your kids and use the smaller pumpkins as decor. After the Halloween season has passed, be sure to compost the pumpkins. Furthermore, you can use fallen branches or twigs as well as pinecones and leaves for decor. You can even paint the leaves and make bats or ghosts with them.

Halloween Crafts

As far as Halloween crafts, there are a plethora of sustainable Halloween crafts you and your kids can do with items you have around the home. Some craft ideas are:

• Halloween Paper Garland: You can use painted paper or newspaper and cut out ghosts, bats, pumpkins, spiders, cats, candy corn, etc. and hang them on a ribbon or string. You can also make handprint ghosts!
• Jack-O-Lantern Magazine Collage: You can cut strips from magazine pages and assemble them into a pumpkin shape.
• Painted Glass Jar: You can use a clean glass jar and paint a ghost, pumpkin, candy corn, or monster. You can add in a tea light for a DIY light. You can also reuse a wine bottle and paint it.
• Milk Jug Ghosts: Similar to the painted glass jar, you can use a milk jug and add a ghost face. You can also paint the milk jug into a pumpkin and add in an LED tea light or fairy lights.
• Painted Tin Can: You can also use clean cans and paint a ghost, pumpkin, monster, mummy, cat, etc.
• Bread Tag Monsters: You can use bread tags and paint them into monsters.
• Toilet Paper or Paper Towel Roll Craft: You can use the roll to make a mummy, pumpkin, vampire, bat, etc.
• Cardboard Decor: You can use cardboard to make figures including skeletons, pumpkins, zombies, spiders, etc.
• Recycled Book Halloween Decorations: You can use old books and paint the covers to make a spell book or magic book to use as decor.
• Thrifted Ghost Painting: You can follow the TikTok trend of finding a painting at a thrift store and turning it into a spooky painting.

@houseandhens

Let me get on this thrifted ghost painting trend 👻

♬ original sound – Emilayygrunn7

Halloween Zineful

Another suggestion for a creative activity is Zineful. Zineful is a DIY booklet with creative and self-expression exercises. Zineful positively impacts health and well-being by stimulating self-awareness, self-expression, and self-development. Furthermore, the act of coloring for 20 minutes can reduce stress and anxiety. There are 2 special Halloween editions of Zineful including:

Zineful Special Edition 01: This edition embraces the witch archetype and pays homage to the countless women lost to witch-hunting. The Zineful includes coloring and creating your own witch archetype along with questions to reflect on. I enjoyed learning more about witches and the different archetypes, and I loved coloring as well.

Zineful KIDS Special Edition 01: This edition is specifically meant for kids though adults may enjoy it as well, and it includes Halloween-themed games, including Brooms and Ladders, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Draw the Other Spooky Half as well as coloring activities. My daughter loved coloring the zine and doing the various activities!

The Zineful editions are £1.20 each. When you purchase a Zineful, you will receive a PDF version and PNG images that you can use digitally or print yourself. Also, there are directions included on how to fold your Zineful if you are printing it.

Make Your Own Halloween Treats

Instead of purchasing individually wrapped candy in plastic packaging, consider making your own Halloween treats. Environment.co has some great homemade eco-friendly Halloween treat ideas including fruit salad, popcorn, chocolate bark, and caramel apples. You can also make Halloween Cookies, Dirt Brownies, or Pumpkin Deviled Eggs. When you are shopping for ingredients, opt for loose produce and ingredients that come in containers like glass jars or metal cans that can be reused, upcycled, or recycled.

If you would like to purchase candy, you should look for environmentally friendly options such as candy with minimal packaging or recyclable packaging like cardboard or foil. You can also purchase bulk candy at grocery stores or candy stores and divide the candy up into paper bags to hand out to guests or trick-or-treaters.

Sustainable Halloween Party Activities

If you are hosting a Halloween party, there are plenty of activities you can do. For example, you can host a costume contest or a pumpkin carving contest. You can also do one or more of the crafts that are listed above. Furthermore, you can do a scavenger hunt, treasure hunt, or use the painted tin cans for bowling. You can even have a movie night and watch a Halloween movie on Disney+ or a Halloween movie on Netflix.

At the Halloween party, instead of using disposable plates, cups, and utensils, you can use dishes and utensils you already own or biodegradable options such as bamboo. Re:gn has a set of Bamboo Cutlery with Bamboo Plates for £23.99, which includes 8 plates, knives, forks, and spoons and are compostable. You can also cook or bake as mentioned above and compost leftover food.

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Do you have any plans for Halloween? Do you have any other tips for having a sustainable Halloween?