Halloween is upon us!
The season of spooky movies, eating too many sweets, and – though less talked about – rampant overconsumption.
Halloween tends to get overlooked in terms of overconsumption, due to its proximity to Christmas (which is an example of massive overconsumption), but whilst not on the level of Christmas, it’s still an annual source of overconsumption and waste.
Wimbledon is far from guilty of this – a look into any shop window shows how many products are newly available – in particular, costumes.
Every year, there is an estimated 2,000 tonnes of plastic waste in the UK, from the throwing away of roughly 7 million costumes.
Most of these will end up in landfill for years, due to being largely made up of polyester (and other plastics), which can take up to 200 years to decompose (releasing damaging microfibres into the environment as they do so).
And even if those outfits never make it to landfill (and stay collecting dust in the back of a wardrobe, or are donated to charity), the creation of these polyester clothes releases carbon emissions into the environment – so the annual purchase of a new Halloween costume is damaging for the environment in its manufacture as well as its disposal.
A big part of it is the culture of overconsumption that’s continually prevalent in our society.
It ramps up at Halloween, yes, but this isn’t out of the blue – all year round, there’s a problematic precedent of buying cheap, poorly-made clothes just to throw them away a few wears later.
This makes purchasing costumes we know we will never wear again more acceptable, as it is not a massive deviation from the norm of our buying habits.
However, there is another layer to the problem.
In the UK, we are not at the forefront of paying the price for the harmful effects of climate change, meaning that many people are able to push the problem to the back of their minds, allowing them to continue behaviour they know is destructive to the environment, because it’s fun, easy, and we don’t have to face the immediate consequences.
The catastrophic events of global warming: the increasing numbers of droughts; the increasingly severe storms; the expansion of deserts, taking away valuable space for growing food – we don’t live through these consequences in the way people do in other places.
Simply put, we are allowed to continue being selfish.
This means that, to a certain extent, people are able to ignore the environmental impacts of their harmful consuming patterns, and continue buying costumes they know they will only wear once.
However, wastage and overconsumption in Halloween goes beyond the costumes.
Food wastage on Halloween – or, more specifically, pumpkin wastage – releases methane into the environment as they decompose in landfill.
According to UK charity Hubbub, in 2022, 52% of people who used pumpkins on Halloween do not make any sort of food with them, but rather scraped, carved, and dumped.
That’s a massive 22.23 million pumpkins that weren’t eaten.
Obviously, this creates a huge amount of food waste. Additionally, leaving pumpkins outside houses for birds, foxes, or badgers to eat can spread diseases and make these animals unwell.
However, 59% of people surveyed did not know that the best thing to do with your pumpkin is to use it – the inside can be made into pasta sauce, broth or soup, curry, and risotto, and the outside can be used for pie, bread, puree and porridge, amongst other dishes.
If everyone ate their Halloween pumpkins, we would save the equivalent of 95 million meals going to waste.
The best way to ensure your pumpkin is safe to eat post-Halloween night is to set whatever light you put inside it on a small dish, and to not eat any parts of the pumpkin with pen/pencil remnants from tracing out your design.
Heather Leece, a Wimbledon resident who began making her Halloween pumpkins into food a few years ago, says:
‘I don’t think people realise just how versatile they are as ingredients in different dishes.
They can be so determined that they don’t like pumpkin, that they refuse to try and find a recipe that works for them.
I used to be the same, until I watched a cooking show that preached the importance of fighting against food waste – and if I can change, then so can everyone else!’
As for Halloween costumes, many environmental charities are recommending shopping second-hand, or creating costumes out of what you already have in your wardrobes, and only buying new accessories (if necessary), rather than buying entire new costumes.
There are a huge number of charity shops in Wimbledon, meaning that the money you spend would be going towards a good cause.
Additionally, if you have any sewing skills, DIY-ing costumes from old clothes you already have is a great excuse to show off your talents without coming across as obnoxious – or, to develop these skills, if you’re less experienced.
The problem of overconsumption, rampant as it is in our society, is unlikely to go away overnight.
But, if we all make small changes this Halloween season, we can cut back on waste, and make the scary movies the only horror of this season.
