By Aaron Lancaster
University of Georgia
Community costumes. Rather than buy a costume your child (or you) will wear once and throw away, make one out of clothes you already have. Thrift stores and yard sales often have low-cost clothing and items suitable for costumes, too. And after the holiday, donate usable clothes and accessories to day care centers, schools or community theaters.
Bag it. Decorate paper grocery sacks with nontoxic paint to create your own trick-or-treat bags. Or use canvas bags, pillowcases or reusable buckets to collect goodies year after year.
Bio decor. Nature intended for apples to be eaten. But you can transform any you didn't eat into spooky shrunken heads for your holiday decor. All you need are some apples, whole cloves, a few grains of rice, a cup of lemon juice and 2 teaspoons of salt.
Peel the apples, and coat them with the lemon juice and salt to prevent them from browning. Then carefully carve a face into the fruit with a peeler or knife. Insert cloves into the carved eye socket to make beady eyes. Rice creates the teeth.
Put the apples somewhere dry and warm for one to two weeks, and watch them shrink and distort. If time is short, put them in an oven at a very low temperature.
Reduce, Reuse, Redecorate. Reuse Halloween decorations from year to year. Properly storing decorations not only reduces waste and saves money, but also preserves the personal value steeped in these items.
Keep it simple. Choose Halloween treats that use the least amount of packaging or useable items like pencils, pens, small toys or coins.
Teach your children well. Candy wrappers often litter neighborhoods after Halloween. Litter is ugly. It's costly to clean up, too, and could cause ecologically important creatures to die needlessly after mistakenly eating plastic and other trash.
Enjoy the season. Walk, ride a bike or use public transportation to Halloween parties or trick-or-treating. If you have to drive, carpool to help reduce traffic and air pollution.
Eco-Lanterns. Use rechargeable batteries to power flashlights, lanterns and decorations to reduce the amount of harmful materials you throw away. They will save money in the long run. Even better are hand-crank and magnetic flashlights, which don't need batteries at all. You can order them from catalogs.
Discarded batteries produce most of the heavy metals found in household trash. Lead, arsenic, zinc, cadmium, copper and mercury can be harmful to humans and wildlife.
Great Pumpkin. Pumpkin seeds from jack-o'-lanterns create a tasty snack for two- and four-legged critters alike. Carefully wash pumpkin seeds to remove the clinging, fibrous pumpkin tissue. Set them outside in a sunny place to feed wildlife.
For humans, dry pumpkin seed treats in the sun, a dehydrator (1 to 2 hours at 115-120 degrees Fahrenheit) or an oven (on "warm" for 3 to 4 hours). Stir them often to avoid scorching them.
Once the seeds are dry, toss them with oil, salt and other seasonings. Roast them in a preheated oven at 250 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes.
Hollowed-out pumpkins filled with ears of Indian corn, seeds, apple cores and skins and cleaned pumpkin seeds make a festive feast for wildlife.
After Halloween. Recycle pumpkins, shrunken apple heads, straw used for scarecrows, hay bales and any other organic material in compost piles.
Compost improves the texture and quality of poor soils while reducing waste. Backyard bins are much more efficient than bagging leaves for collection.
Contact your county Extension Service to learn more about composting. Or check the on-line publication at www.ces.uga.edu/pubcd/c816-w.html.
(Aaron Lancaster is a Bibb County Extension agent with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
