Plastic Waste: The Scary Aftermath of Halloween

By Lisa Smith

I’ve often heard students lament that while they love sociology, it often ruins things they used to enjoy. It’s true that once you start to peel back the layers of the society you live in and understand what’s truly going on, you can’t look at things the same way.

Halloween is fast approaching as I write this post. I have done my fair share of pumpkin carving, planning costumes, spookifying my windows, and of course handing out candy to trick or treaters. I grew up in a cultural context where these activities were normal and encouraged.

As a parent, I have transmitted these cultural practices to my kids and enjoy reaping the benefits, literally. They share their hard-earned candy haul with me and know the ones I like most. For all that I love about Halloween, after the big day, I am left with a sense of dis-ease as I walk through my neighborhood. The plastic hangover hits me in full force. The streets are strewn with litter, everything from glow bands to pieces of inflatable decorations to costume parts gone astray to loot bags.

Image Source: Carl Raw, 2017, Unsplash

Of course, the most pervasive plastic offenders are the candy wrappers that appear in gutters, on the street, scattered about playgrounds and spilling out of garbage bins. The incredible amount of plastic waste generated from Halloween is not new information. The amounts are terrifying, such as candy in disposable wrappers in the United States (an estimated 600 million pounds of candy per year!) or plastic waste from throwaway costumes in the UK (2000 tons of mustaches, googly eyeglasses, devil horns and capes heading to landfills!).

Environmental activists and advocates regularly sound the alarm as Halloween approaches emphasizing that plastic garbage needs to go where it belongs, so that it doesn’t end up in waterways or cause harm to animals, or be eliminated entirely. Imagine a future where zero-waste Halloween was not just a goal, but a reality. While this is tough to imagine, let’s put things in perspective with a bit of cultural context.

Shared holidays are a prime example of both how culture is constructed and sustained over time and the way culture changes. Halloween is not celebrated around the world, and there are many differences in Halloween customs and traditions. Historically, Halloween hasn’t always been a plastic waste fest, with roots extending back to the Irish countryside and Samhain (learn more in this excellent podcast). The combined forces of capitalist consumption and disposability have shaped the transformation of many cultural practices in the Global North, including but not limited to, Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day.

Halloween is a way that people build community and connection, and we can find variations of customs and practices across a given society, and even within neighborhoods; the Covid-19 pandemic pushed people to adapt out of necessity. Culture can change when we recognize that the existing customs or practices are not in line with the underlying beliefs and values of the time.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in my lifetime around cultural attitudes towards waste management that have led to positive transformation in practices. Like many other people around me, I use a reusable water bottle, not a plastic disposable one. The latter were almost ubiquitous when I was growing up.

In Canada, we are regulating single-use plastic items, such as shopping bags, and they are not even available in some stores, so you are compelled to employ a reusable option. Holidays are often marked as special occasions to let loose and have fun, or in this case, to look the other way and persist in damaging customs and practices.

If this topic is new to you and you care about climate justice (we all should), loop into the amazing resources that are available on participating in Halloween without making waste, very little waste or managing the waste you do consume. For example, take the time to return your plastic candy wrappers for recycling if an opportunity exists in your community.

Environmental change discourses often emphasize a “do just one thing” approach—emphasizing the impact of small individual actions and single steps to get things moving. While I applaud this effort, I would add to this do one thing, try to bring other people with you and know that a plastic free future requires cultural change across all levels of society—from individuals to neighborhoods to and beyond. That’s because culture is not made by just one person, but by many people coming together over time to create the way we do things, whether it’s consuming candy or displaying spooky decorations.  

Can you easily recycle plastic waste, such as candy wrappers in your community? Do you participate in zero waste or low waste initiatives?

Have you witnessed changes or transformation in the traditions or customs associated with Halloween? What do you think caused the change?