Susie O’Brien: Halloween doesn’t need to be an eco-green fever dream

Halloween is now less about watching the kids go psycho on a sugar-high and more about guides, checklists, workshops and eco-friendly initiatives - and it’s ruining the fun.

May Halloween stay orange, not green.

Halloween used to be a night of fun where kids were given lollies by people unlucky enough to be living in your street.

The scariest thing used to be the amount of sugar the kids consumed- not to mention the willingness of some parents to parade around the streets in sexy pirate handmaiden costumes.

The biggest concern was the possibility of running out of sweets just as a group of local neighbourhood kiddie terrorists knocked on the door.

Note to parents: maybe go easy with the sexy Halloween costumes.

But now the most horrifying thing is apparently Halloween’s impact on the environment.

Halloween has gone green, and there are risks lurking in every pumpkin, fake cobwebs and single-use plastic corpse.

Now October 31 is now less about watching the kids go psycho on a sugar-high and more about guides, checklists, workshops and eco-friendly initiatives.

Media outlets are running numerous accounts of how “Halloween pumpkins contribute to the climate crisis”.

One council is urging us to ensure Halloween is “scary and sustainable” and wants us to hold a “zero waste Halloween competition” and “slash Halloween waste”.

Another green Halloween guide suggests I knit my own spider webs (umm, no thanks), fashion decorations out of cardboard and make sure my pumpkin ends up in the worm farm and not the rubbish, where it will apparently emit more gas than a yardful of flatulent cows.

It’s all so joyless and automatically assumes we’re all idiots doing the wrong thing.

My kids are now growing up, but I’ve got a ragtag collection of Halloween decorations.

They may be officially single-use plastic, but I’ve had them for years.

I’d never buy fake cobwebs – I do know they’re bad for birds, not to mention goddam ugly – but what’s wrong with a few cheap and nasty decorations pulled out of the cupboard every year?

There’s a lot more to Halloween than the waste created – why aren’t these same people counting the benefit to the community? Or the way it helps get to know their neighbours?

Or the fun the kids have?

I shouldn’t be surprised. A few years ago, the threat to Halloween came from another source: the “microaggression” of culturally inappropriate costumes.

Presumably, these are the same people who turned Christmas into a bleak religion-free event involving the joyless phrase “Happy Holidays”.

So let me say proudly: Happy Halloween. May it stay orange, not green.

Originally published as Susie O’Brien: Halloween doesn’t need to be an eco-green fever dream