Eco-Friendly Family
LI444
member
What (if anything) do you give out at Halloween?
LI444
member
I have lots of ideas for making Christmas more eco-friendly (making handmade/baked things and wrapping them in reusable fabric bags), but I just read an article about how lots of Halloween candy comes from companies that use cocoa from child slaves in Africa. (https://www.good.is/post/child-slaves-made-your-halloween-candy-stop-buying-it/) I'm sickened by it. The article suggest fair trade alternatives, but our budget is pretty tight. What do you give out?
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Re: What (if anything) do you give out at Halloween?
Eek! I didn't know that!
One year I did find some fair trade cookies that were like teddie grahams in fun size packets, but I can't find them anymore. This year, we have some pez and pez dispensers, because MH loves them and would collect them if we had the space. I'm probably also going to throw some fruit leather in there, or whatever they call the real fruit version of fruit roll-ups. I know the extra packaging is wasteful, but I love getting trick or treaters and am not sure what, if any, EF alternative there is since most moms throw away hand-packaged stuff for safety reasons (as would I).
I think the brand name is Annie's, or something with Annie's in it... I find them in the Organics section of my grocery store (Publix, if you do happen to live in FL). I think Whole Foods carries them too.
ETA: We do give out candy, but not a lot of chocolate. We go with Nerds or something like that, or snack packs of cookies.
I'm doing fair trade chocolate this year.
https://www.naturalcandystore.com/category/fair-trade-halloween-candy
The ones I'm getting work out to be 27 cents per bar, which isn't horrible for fair trade/organic.
Just FYI - sugar is just as much of a concern as chocolate when you are considering fair trade options. There are just as many ethical concerns in the sugar industry.
But I think we'll do a mixture of temporary tattoos, candy, and fruit snacks.
52 Choices For Better Health
We tend to do regular brand mixed candy to let kids pick what they want. I usually spend Halloween at my parent's home, and the next door neighbor does a big haunted house, plus its a safe area with a lot of homes so its not uncommon for us to get 300+ kids in the night [one year was almost 400] so fancy candy isn't an option for us! Most of the parents I know would never let their kids eat anything that wasn't in an original wrapper, so unfortunately doing something like yogurt pretzels in bulk isn't an option either.
We really love participating in Halloween, so we try to make good choices the rest of the year and buy what we can afford for giving out.
100 Days of Real Food just had a post on how to do Halloween without candy: https://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2011/10/07/real-food-tips-20-ways-to-do-halloween-without-candy/
I liked the plastic snakes and spiders idea.
I think I like the plastic toy idea even less than giving out candy. The toys are most likely made in China in a sweat shop and will also most likely end up in the trash shortly after Halloween.
Great idea! I didn't think of that, but kids love those things, and I keep seeing cool Halloween ones in the dollar bins at Target.
I think that's a great choice. It's a practical gift that will be used. I would just look into where and how the pencils were made before buying them.
Thank goodness we won't be home because this was a huge concern to me. I am more EF than hubby so he's not concerned at all. When will he jump on my boat anyways.
Love: pretzels, temp tatts, fun toys, fruit snacks...what about juice boxes for that exhausting walk from neighbor to neighbor lol!
I think dd is far too young to T/T but dh wants too...I dont want her seeing all this candy and wanting to eat it all right there. I can see the FIGHT now~in the street.