Making the most eco-friendly choices can sometimes be frustratingly complicated. Just when I think I have found the answer to something I find some information that tells me I should be doing the opposite!
Trick-or-treat sweets for Halloween have been my latest challenge. The sight of all the plastic wrapped sweets in the shops has been making me cringe. (Not to mention all the plastic costumes, decorations and tat!) So I have been on a mission to find some sweet treats that are more sustainably wrapped. (Boxes of raisins would not make me popular!)
I eventually thought I had found the answer in some foil wrapped chocolates, even with the plastic net that they came in I thought this must surely be the best option. However, upon further research I discovered that foil is actually worse for the environment in terms of the way that it is made! So where do I go from here? Do I choose foil that is more damaging in the way it is made but can be recycled or plastic that it marginally better in the way it is produced but cannot be recycled?
In the end I decided to do a little bit of both. I have therefore bought some sweets wrapped in plastic and some small chocolate balls in foil. I am sure that most people are aware that the foil can be recycled and will therefore hopefully do so. (Though it is worth noting that recycling facilities cannot recognise foil unless it is at least the size of a tennis ball. So I now have an empty jar in my kitchen where I collect all of my small bits of foil eg milk bottle tops, yoghurt lids etc, which I then scrunch into a ball when I have enough.)
In terms of the plastic sweet wrappers, I couldn’t bear the thought of it and so have taken the recycling of them into my own hands by signing up to be a private sweet wrapper collector for Terracycle (unfortunately if I go public it will cost me a fortune). I was particularly incentivised to do this now as there is currently 20% off the price of this recycling collection scheme (until 31st October). I figure that the recycling box should last me quite a while and in that time I am hoping that better product and recycling options will become available and so I will not have to do it again. In the meantime I have also offered to recycle my neighbours’ sweet wrappers as it will be them that are my main trick-or-treaters!
Sweets aside, the rest of Halloween has been easy as we were spoilt for choice with second hand costumes for the boys, and for the dress-up day at gymnastics I just sewed some eyes, a nose and mouth onto their (conveniently orange) gym t-shirts. We used last years decorations and my youngest made his own Halloween bunting. So all I need to do now is to hope that it doesn’t rain tomorrow when we are out and about trick-or-treating!
