South Portland’s sustainability manager offers 7 tips for an environmentally friendly Halloween
South Portland sustainability expert offers roadmap for a greener Halloween
SOUTH PORTLAND — As Maine lawns begin sprouting inflatable ghosts and store aisles overflow with polyester capes, Julie Taft is thinking about what happens after the trick-or-treaters go home.
Taft, the sustainability program manager for the city of South Portland, wants residents to treat Halloween waste with the same gravity as the holiday’s fictional frights. The volume is real: Americans buy roughly 500 million pounds of candy each October, and industry estimates suggest more than 80 percent of mass-market costumes are made from oil-based plastics designed for a single wear.
“Not buying new plastic is not increasing the need for the production of new plastics,” Taft said.
The problem starts in the costume aisle. Most prepackaged outfits are essentially petroleum products — polyester, nylon, acrylic — that will sit in landfills for centuries. Taft recommends checking local swap shops, thrift stores, and community Facebook pages before buying new. Several Maine towns organize formal costume exchanges; others have informal “freecycle” groups. A cardboard box, she notes, can become a robot, a Rubik’s Cube, or a diesel engine with nothing more than paint and imagination.
Decorations carry their own hazards. Those stretchy synthetic cobwebs draped over bushes are lightweight enough to blow into woods and wetlands, where they entangle birds, rodents, and beneficial insects. Because the material isn’t recyclable, the only responsible option is to pack them away and reuse them year after year — or skip them entirely.
For larger yard decor — the seven-foot skeletons, the arched-back black cats — the secondary market is robust. Thrift stores and municipal swap shops often carry them at a fraction of retail price. When the season ends, Taft urges donors to pass decorations along rather than dump them. “Maybe the Frankenstein that’s been gathering dust in your basement would make someone else really happy,” she said.
A lower-impact alternative is the classic scarecrow. An outgrown flannel shirt, a pair of worn jeans, a pillowcase face, and a stuffing of freshly raked leaves create a decoration that returns to the soil come spring. Accessories — sunglasses, a necktie, a floppy hat — add personality without waste.
Candy wrappers present a stealthier challenge. The multi-layer films that keep chocolate bars fresh are not accepted in standard municipal recycling streams. South Portland’s Go-Go Refill, a zero-waste shop, hosts a Terracycle collection box specifically for snack and candy packaging. Residents outside the city can purchase their own Terracycle boxes online, though the cost means the solution works best for neighborhoods, schools, or offices that pool resources.
Then there’s the pumpkin. The stringy pulp and seeds scooped out during carving are edible — and, Taft argues, the best part. Seeds rinsed, dried thoroughly, and roasted with either paprika and garlic salt or cinnamon, brown sugar, and a pinch of salt become a snack that justifies the mess. Once the jack-o’-lantern collapses, it shouldn’t hit the trash. Pigs and cattle relish them; many area farms accept drop-offs for livestock feed. Portland’s annual Pumpkin-Cycle event, held the weekend after Halloween, offers a communal composting option complete with sledgehammers for a cathartic smash before the bins.
Taken together, the adjustments are small: a thrifted cape instead of a sealed bag, a scarecrow instead of a plastic skeleton, a roasted seed instead of a trashed handful. But multiplied across thousands of Maine households, they keep tons of petroleum-based waste out of the waste stream — a treat with no trick attached.
