Spooky Sustainability

Join Shane and Chadwick as we explore the spooky environmental impact of Halloween. We discuss the wastefulness of Halloween costumes, the environmental consequences of candy wrappers, and the disposal of pumpkins. So, whether you're a fan of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or planning to grow your own pumpkins, we try to offer some thought-provoking insights into making Halloween more carbon-friendly.

Useful Resources
Let's make Halloween more sustainable!
Is The Halloween Supply Chain A Sustainability Nightmare?
Scary Halloween sustainability facts | Save Your Wardrobe
Most Popular Halloween Candy 2023 - CandyStore.com
How much does a pound of reeces peanut butter cups cost
Halloween waste is a 'major issue' for climate. Here's how to be more sustainable this year

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Transcript

Shane (00:02.166)
All right, welcome back everyone to another conversation.

Welcome back everyone to another Crbnly Conversation. As usual, it's me, Shane, and I've got my buddy Chad here with me tonight, as always.

Chadwick (00:17.589)
Hello? Good evening.

Shane (00:18.846)
He says, Oh, a lot of everyone. We appreciate everyone's support. If you didn't know, you know, our podcast is, is where we as friends examine the intersection of community, lifestyles and consumption. We've created this podcast because we wanna give a platform to share our stories in order to motivate actions that lessen our carbon footprint, and as well, you know, share, build a community of members that can share their carbon lead journeys.

Um, and as always, you know, scroll down, you can click on, uh, join the conversation or wait, it's been so long since I've read this thing.

Shane (01:05.942)
And we want to remind everyone out there listening, first time listeners, avid, avid listeners, that's tuned in every episode. We've made it very easy for you to listen to our podcast on any app that you use. All you need to do is scroll down to the show notes, click on find and join the conversation. And that'll give you a link to any podcast platform that you may use to tune in to us.

and we try to hit you with some new content every Wednesday. This one's coming out a little bit early because of the holiday. And also check us out Instagram. We've got some cool posts there and you can also see our beautiful faces on our YouTube channel. Just search Crbnly Conversations on YouTube and we've got some video content there for you as well.

Chadwick (01:41.066)
Yes, we do.

Shane (02:03.61)
But let's get the show on the road. What do you got going for us, Chad?

Chadwick (02:09.078)
Well, Shane, I think on today's episode, we're gonna explore some of those spooky facts about the effects Halloween has on the environment, how you can try, think, act to be more Crbnly for Halloween. And I know we were talking pre-show about how hard that might be to do it, how hard it is to maybe do that or accomplish that. But before we dig in and share some of those spooky facts, what I would really like to know is what...

Do you have a favorite memory for Halloween?

Shane (02:42.55)
Yeah, definitely. I just remember as a kid, especially my, I would say, my tween years, you know, 11 to 14 or whatnot, because at about 15 or so you feel a little too cool to, to go trick or treating. But I just remember like meeting up with all my friends in the neighborhood and us just kind of going out as a group.

If a house, you would start to remember which houses gave the good candy. So you'd make sure to get to them, get to them first. And then, you know, you knew which house on the, in the neighborhood was given out apples, so you made sure not to go to them. Um, and then we would also, if a house was giving out something really good, we would, once we made it to the end of the street, some of us, we would just swap masks and then we'd go back to the same house.

Chadwick (03:15.726)
Sure.

Chadwick (03:25.319)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (03:39.086)
you know, to double up on him. But it was just always fun. It was like a, it was just kind of like a reason to, to be out with your friends. Um, and, and of course at the end of the night have a bag full. I usually would have like a pillowcase or something. You'd go home and you'd dump out your, your whole pillowcase of candy and kind of see what you got and you know, when my brother was of age to trick or treat, we would kind of

Chadwick (03:58.102)
Yeah.

Shane (04:07.958)
swap out things here and there if he had something he didn't like and, you know, just trade candies with each other and, you know, and my mom would come in and take her part. She'd make her own little basket with our candy of candy that she liked, you know, so it was good times. Yeah, parent tax. So how about you?

Chadwick (04:25.086)
Yeah, the parent text. Yeah, yeah. Um, it was, I think the memory I would share, like I can resonate with a lot of those, but you just shared, Shane. But I think the memory that I want to share is, it was just always part of our lives. And it was something that we, it was very social. That makes sense. And that's what I remember the most. Like I was actually telling a co-worker today, that I think until I moved from

Shane (04:46.876)
Yeah.

Chadwick (04:54.634)
central Minnesota where I grew up to the East Coast. There wasn't many years, if any, that I missed trick-or-treating. Like I just went, whether I had kids or went as a kid, or we used to bring the foreign exchange students trick-or-treating. You know, it's just something we love doing. We dress up and go and do. And as I got older, like, going to other friends' house and handing out candy, because not all of us are blessed to live in a neighborhood where trick-or-treating happens.

So I think to me, like that social aspect and that familiar family feel, just has a, Halloween has a special place in my heart, in my life. And that's why I think it makes like the tunnel where I think we're gonna go with like spooky sustainability because when you stop and do some of the research like we have and we'll go over here with our listeners is that-

Shane (05:28.21)
Yeah.

Shane (05:52.517)
Yeah.

Chadwick (05:53.602)
There's not a lot of sustainable ways to celebrate Halloween. I mean, there is, but it's really hard to do it. But we'll get into that shortly. So thanks for sharing your memory. Like I'm sure a lot of us, a lot of our memories are rooted maybe in root canals from too much candy, but like in candy and getting candy as currency for kids. But for that.

Shane (06:02.408)
Yep.

Shane (06:15.352)
Seriously.

Chadwick (06:20.306)
small, we'll just say sample size of our listeners that doesn't know what Halloween is. We're gonna read here just a short snippet to help you understand. So every Hollow's Eve, the night before All Saints Day, which is celebrated in Europe and America to this day on November 1st, the Celts held a festival called Samhain where they would light bonfires, wear costumes, and do all sorts of things out of the norm in attempts to scare off ghosts.

The Celts believed that every year on the evening of October 31st, the living and dead were able to walk amongst the same realm of the world. November 1st was known as the New Year to the Celtic region back then, therefore the annual attempt to ward off ghosts or other supernatural spirits was also to ensure that the New Year would be free of evil. So for those wondering kind of why we have the spooky season of Halloween and all the commercialization around, you know.

pumpkins, like fall wear, candy, costumes, like it kind of like ties back to the Celtic tradition, which I mean, everything we do has probably some tradition or some historical tie back. So there you have it listeners, Halloween exists, we are faced, I would even argue forced to have to deal with the consequences of it.

Shane (07:23.35)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (07:34.513)
Very true.

Shane (07:38.991)
Yep.

Chadwick (07:46.142)
And how we go about doing that is what we're going to kind of share here on some of the topics.

Shane (07:52.39)
Yeah, I mean, it's inevitable. Like we, we both have great memories of this holiday. Um, you know, and it's, we don't expect anyone to stop celebrating it because of the, the information we're going to provide it. It's at the end of the day, it's a great, it's a great holiday. I think what you said about community, um, really struck a core with me because it is.

When you really think about it, it really is a way to get out and kind of bond with your neighbors and Maybe get to know some new neighbors and things like that So all we're wanting to do is kind of give these facts and then you You as a listener can kind of pick and choose of like, okay. These are some things that maybe I can try next year To be a little bit more Crbnly

Chadwick (08:41.166)
Sure.

Shane (08:45.106)
during the holidays and I'll kind of, so costumes is number one. It's all about, you know, other than going out and getting the candy, as you become an adult, it's not really about the candy, it's about like the costumes going out to your different costume parties and things like that. And it just so happened the other night, I went outside to take out my...

to sit, pull my trash out to the curb for garbage pick up. And the lady that lives across the street from me, she comes out of her apartment and she's dressed like Corella DeVille from 101 Dalmatians. And then she's got this huge, like, almost life-size stuffed animal of a Dalmatian. And I was just like, man, like...

Chadwick (09:25.198)
Sure.

Shane (09:36.342)
Especially we've already we had already been doing this research for this episode and it was I was just like Man, like what is she gonna do with that stuffed animal like? after 10 after After her Halloween party. She was obviously on the way to a Halloween party and it's like she's a grown adult woman She's not gonna probably keep this huge stuffed animal. So it just hit me and it's just like

Chadwick (09:47.314)
Yeah, what does he do?

Shane (10:01.718)
Top of costumes with all the accessories and things like that. It's just so wasteful when you really when you really think about it It so fun, and that's kind of the double-edged sword of Halloween is just like She had a she you know she wanted to show up. There's usually out of Halloween party there's probably like a competition of like best costume and

Chadwick (10:11.722)
and yet so fun.

Shane (10:30.374)
and things like that, so people really go all out for their costumes. But we just don't think about it. Like, you know, some of the information is like in the United States, it's almost 12 million pounds of textiles that are created solely for costumes that are wasted every year. A lot of people throw away these costumes. Like people don't really...

Chadwick (10:30.459)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (10:59.03)
wear them for more than one year. Exactly.

Chadwick (10:59.058)
Yeah, and they're not built to last a lot of them like the especially the kid ones They're especially the ones I grew up with like they few got more than one usage out of them you were I Mean plus you put them on little kids or kids do things

Shane (11:11.197)
Yeah.

Right. And you know, maybe every now and then you, you take your kid to the grocery store and they want to be Spider-Man and they'll throw on their old Spider-Man costume or something. But that's very rare. You know what I mean? And on top of that, they just become more and more expensive every year. And it's not like the quality of the fabrics is getting better. You know,

Chadwick (11:23.86)
Yep, there.

Shane (11:38.914)
80% you know 80% maybe even more are created with cheap synthetics like polyester and You know, they're non biodegradable So you can't you can't really recycle anything from it, you know, so it's like you probably Yeah Exactly. So, I mean just imagine how many superhero costumes are just laying in the landfill, you know

Chadwick (11:54.078)
Yeah, we only need so many so much nylon to produce bagoos like there's just a limit. Yeah.

Chadwick (12:06.926)
Yeah, I don't want to know. Well, a whole bunch, a whole bunch. I've been, I was thinking about this too, because like we talked a bunch about thrifting at times and I'm like, I think it's a poor use of thrifting. So you go to the thrift store and build a costume, but you're building a costume to your point just now, like not an outfit you may wear over and over and over again. So do you go back and redonate those clothes?

Shane (12:09.006)
So, a whole bunch.

Shane (12:28.966)
Yeah.

Chadwick (12:34.25)
So then yeah, maybe like Goodwill or whoever you want thrifted at, like they get that transactional return and that helps them promote and do more thrifting or recycling of threads. But at the same time, like it's still a single use. Like, it just kills me. I can't think of a good way unless you're somehow repurposing some clothes that you're gonna turn into rags or like things you already own.

Shane (12:37.182)
true.

Shane (12:57.992)
Yeah.

Chadwick (13:03.274)
And also like, it's fun to dress up and it's fun to go all out. And sometimes I think the article you were reading like it involves like feathers and other plastic gadgetry that just has no place. And you know, we've talked about the recycling and these plastic numbers. A lot of this stuff is, if it's already wound up in one costume, I'm like, how do you like unpackage and like will people do that, right? And if it does get to the recycling center, does it get peeled apart?

Shane (13:06.973)
Right?

Shane (13:23.37)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (13:27.335)
Right.

Chadwick (13:31.466)
So that's why I think spooky sustainability, like this is spooky, like Halloween is fun, but it's, these costumes are spooky for different, sustainably spooky.

Shane (13:39.322)
They are.

So yeah, we challenge everyone out there next year. Maybe you send it or even this year, if you created your own costume and it's somewhat sustainable, like send us some pictures. We would love to see them, share them. And it makes you get even more creative. So.

Chadwick (13:57.054)
Yes. Please.

Please tag us. I would love that. Well, speaking of another spooky topic is candy. I mean, we both reminisced on Halloween and candy. And I mean, I eat my fair share and we did post some live like Instagram and beyond. So I found this fascinating. Like I'll go into a little bit of the data that I went digging around. So that the average American spends about $32 a year on or will this.

Shane (14:13.959)
Yep.

Chadwick (14:31.65)
this next year on candy for Halloween. And if you look at like, is it candy.com? It's a useful resource link, I'll have it, what the actual it is. But they posted like the top 10 candies per state for Halloween, right? And across the board Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are, if not one in the top three, like so millions, tens of millions of pounds of these. So if you just take those Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as like a standard bearer for the waste on Halloween candy.

Shane (14:51.206)
Yeah.

Shane (15:01.35)
Yeah.

Chadwick (15:01.626)
and I went and looked at Walmart. If you buy a pound and a half of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, that's about $32, give or take. So for the average American's gonna spend $32 this year on Halloween candy. The average American likes Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, so they're gonna buy a pound and a half of these, which is about 40 or so regular size Peanut Butter Cups in individual wrapping.

Shane (15:16.603)
Thank you.

Shane (15:21.17)
Yeah.

Chadwick (15:30.754)
This is where I want to say caveat. Anything about safety and security of all of our kids and ourself. Candy needs to be wrapped individually. You need to know it's not tampered with and it's safe. Not going to get in the whole like, coupla of like all the freaked out frenzied natives that like X-raying your candy. Like that stuff was ridiculous. But it's just, you want to know it's safe to consume, right? So that's like 45, 40 wrappers of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Shane (15:46.939)
I remember, yeah.

Chadwick (15:57.794)
times like 170 million Americans, right? Like that's an insane amount of rappers. Like where does that go? I didn't even want to ask the robots to figure out like how many swimming pools would those rappers fill compressed, you know? Cause we all know we're guilty of like 40 to 50 of them ourselves and I'll keep increasing because I may eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cups more than the average American. But it's just like when you start doing some of that math and you know none of this is recyclable.

Shane (16:00.894)
Thanks for watching!

Shane (16:11.33)
Yeah, good question.

Shane (16:22.782)
Okay, I'll do it.

Chadwick (16:27.646)
or even the parts that are recyclable as it getting to the recycling bin, and just how hard it is to do that. And it's a little nut so. So like candies, it probably, costumes are bad, like spooky, candy is just as bad. You know, like one of the articles we pulled from, I think Fortune, so the average trick-or-treater generates about a pound of trash, plastic candy wrappers.

Shane (16:43.602)
Just as bad.

Chadwick (16:56.126)
But they do, you know, eco-friendly wrappers. I did like this, like the locally produced candy, like can you reduce your candy miles? You know, so I like, so when you unpack some of like all the things that go into it, maybe the wrapper, having all those wrappers not at the end of the world, some might biodegrade. But how many miles did all that candy have to go? So like how much gasoline and like fuel had to be used to-

Shane (17:05.179)
Hmm.

Shane (17:15.079)
Yeah.

Chadwick (17:23.65)
get candy from Hershey or wherever else produced and then shipped all over. So that may be like the biggest thing we can do, you know, math with standing is like just reduce the actual mileage on your candy. And can you buy local confectioners and fun stuff? They're just as good as Reese's peanut butter cups. I don't know. What's your thought on that Shane?

Shane (17:41.946)
This would, this would, well, first thing that comes to mind, this would be a good time to give a shout out to one of our favorite candy shops, Muths Candy in Louisville. Yeah.

Chadwick (17:49.356)
Ay!

Muths Candy and Downtown Nulu Louisville, Kentucky. If you want to fax a candy order, they'll take your fax and ship you some candy and it's amazing. But for the yeah, bourbon balls.

Shane (17:56.39)
But, um...

Shane (18:03.522)
Yeah, check them out if you have it. But other than that, I you know one thing that came to mind was

Shane (18:15.742)
Also the production of so like you could go and buy all of these candies year round It's not like these are just specific to halloween but then there's the production of making it halloween so like Creating the extra bags that it goes into I think I was at target the other day and they have a halloween version of twix that's Green inside and the cookie inside of the twix is green and it's specifically made for halloween. So like

Chadwick (18:24.82)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (18:34.606)
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Shane (18:45.062)
beyond the rappers and all that, just the production of making these specific Halloween candies or like you might find a bat shaped Snickers, who knows, you know what I mean? So.

Chadwick (18:56.336)
Yeah, yeah.

Shane (19:00.006)
But yeah, I mean, it's just, I remember just having piles of rappers as a kid, and you never thought, as a kid, you never thought like, oh, like, is this recyclable? You just threw it in the trash. And it would be nice to see some of these larger companies create a more recyclable rapper, eco-friendly rappers, because that's, the numbers you gave is just...

It's pretty ridiculous. And it's also sad that the $32 for a pound and a half of risi cups, when you can go and, you know, the average household probably needs, you know, ground beef before they need the risi cups. And that's way more expensive, you know, to buy these risi cups than it is some actual food.

Chadwick (19:52.515)
Yeah, and I mean this is what makes this whole episode really difficult is It's spooky when you bring up ground beef. I don't know which one's worse for the environment You know a pound of Reese's peanut butter cups or a pound of ground beef But I mean a pound and a half is $32. So what is it like? Oh $20 a pound of Reese's peanut butter cups That's 20 bucks a pound, you know You don't need that

Shane (20:00.456)
Yeah.

Yep.

Shane (20:07.614)
true.

Shane (20:14.567)
Yeah.

Crazy, crazy. So yeah, I mean, there's really, I guess there's not much carbonly we can say about the candy aspect other than I do know some cities might have like a drop-off zone where there's some companies that will take your candy wrappers and discard it. I'm not sure exactly what the process is, but if you are looking for ways to be more carbonly when it comes to the candy.

You can maybe look into that because unfortunately there aren't many eco-friendly options when it comes to the candy wrappers.

Chadwick (20:55.754)
Yeah, safe and eco. And you don't want to be the person that's handing out apples or toothbrushes. But that might actually be the solution.

Shane (21:01.646)
Yeah. Yep.

Yep. And one of the last things that, you know, signifies Halloween is pumpkins. I mean, it's the logo you see everywhere. No one really cares about pumpkins all year round. But when it comes to Halloween, you know, so literally one point, around 1.4 billion pumpkins are produced for Halloween each year.

Chadwick (21:15.786)
Holy pumpkin.

Chadwick (21:22.867)
It's really funny.

Shane (21:34.438)
We won't even get into all of the water and all of the other things it takes to even grow those. But around...

Shane (21:50.582)
Everyone buys them. You typically sit them out on your front porch for decoration. Some people like to carve. Some people like to paint them. But the real the real question is and where it really becomes effective is how are you discarding of the pumpkins? You know, another one of my neighbors currently right now has six pumpkins on her porch and.

They've been out for a week or so and they're starting to look pretty bad. And I'm pretty sure she's just going to throw them in the trash, you know, and that's going to get mixed up in the landfill. But there are green options. So like around 60 percent of consumers that buy pumpkins to carve them don't end up eating the flesh. But there are there are options to actually lessen food waste with these. I particularly are you a fan of pumpkin seeds, Chad? I know some people will.

Chadwick (22:22.385)
Yeah.

Chadwick (22:45.35)
Um, yes and no. Like I like them in salads. I don't like to eat them like sunflower seeds, but that is one way to do it.

Shane (22:45.83)
roast them and.

Shane (22:52.182)
Okay, I've never I've never tried it that way. Okay And then also some from some of the research we did you can you can actually? Do like a there's health benefits so like you can make like a facial scrub from the insides of the pumpkins Which sounds weird, but I'm sure there are a lot of benefits because it's always weird when you're dipping your hand in or Scooping out all the insides of the pumpkins gets real gooey

Chadwick (23:06.423)
Yeah.

Chadwick (23:19.341)
Yeah.

Shane (23:21.162)
But one thing that I that I highly recommend is If you don't have if you don't have anywhere to like compost the pumpkins yourselves One thing I recommend is first of all Don't paint them carve instead of paint Because once you paint them even if you have somewhere in your neighborhood where you can throw you know Throw them in a compost

The paint is no good for the compost. So carving it definitely helps. And then also look up, reach out to your local, what is it, trash company provider, waste management company. They may have an option. I've spoke about my local waste management company, Swaco, a few times on a couple episodes, and they actually just sent out an email to their customers of,

Chadwick (24:01.698)
your waste management companies, yeah?

Shane (24:17.97)
There's three different drop-off zones that they have where you can drop off your used pumpkins once you're done, pumpkins and gourds, and then they'll get rid of them for you, so it's a big help.

Chadwick (24:30.862)
I think that's the big carbon lay-as, because go out of your way to reduce food waste, i.e. pumpkin waste, by making sure the pumpkins end up somewhere where they can get composted and turned into something useful. Because adding them to the dump, the landfill, it's just going to add a whole bunch of other methane and other items not good for our environment. And there's a lot of pumpkins that are produced just

Shane (24:45.019)
Yep.

Shane (25:00.398)
a whole lot and traveled who knows where they're coming from. I may even challenge myself to next year. I'm fortunate to have a backyard. I may challenge myself to grow my own pumpkins that I'll use from now on, you know, to carve and set out as decorations. Do you have any, have you ever grown any pumpkins? Like

Chadwick (25:00.662)
to be carved and thrown away. I mean.

Yeah.

Chadwick (25:24.534)
Yeah, they just take a lot of space and time, because you plant them early in the spring, and they're really not ready until everything starts freezing. I mean, the other thing is my dad does, like my mom and dad, they're pretty carverly in some ways. They've tried to grow pumpkins and squash every year and sell them, but the big competing thing is you go to the local grocery store or the Walmart or wherever, and they're just way cheaper because they're buying them in volume, and you know.

Shane (25:46.614)
Yeah. And that's way cheaper. Yep.

Chadwick (25:53.322)
Not everyone will do that, because I think there's something in that nostalgia of Halloween where you go to the local farmer or go to the local farmer's market, you know, and get these goodies, these fall harvest goodies. So there is that. Just interesting how that all kind of plays out. It's just, I don't have a good answer, listeners. We don't have good answers to this. Just facts.

Shane (26:00.072)
Yeah.

Shane (26:10.83)
Yeah, well, we didn't mean to. Yeah. Yeah, don't come. Don't come here for answers. We just have information that we've read and examples that we personally want to try and live by. Don't definitely don't come here for any of the true answers. You you can kind of listen to us and make up your own answers. But we hope. Yeah.

Chadwick (26:36.842)
and then share them with us. Share them with us on Instagram, reach out in our email, just post them and tag us. We wanna know.

Shane (26:45.158)
Yep, and we hope that this episode didn't scare you too much with the spooky facts of Halloween, but we do hope you enjoyed it, and we look forward to seeing how everyone can be a little bit more carbon-ly during this.

this Halloween, so it was fun.

Chadwick (27:06.638)
Kudos to that. With that, I'm gonna try not to go buy some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups on clearance tomorrow.

Shane (27:10.826)
Exactly. That's on my mind. Oh yeah, that's another good part of Halloween, but we'll save that for next year. The clearance candy.

Chadwick (27:18.28)
Yeah.

Yeah, have a good night, Shane. Stay carbon, y'all.

Shane (27:22.64)
It's a.