10 Eco-friendly Halloween Decor Ideas for Festive Homes
Halloween can be a time of excessive waste. People flock to stores to buy polyester costumes and cheap, disposable decorations, most of which are thrown out afterwards to pile up in landfills.
Instead of overconsuming this Halloween use this as an opportunity to get your creative juices flowing, so you can find sustainable ways to decorate your home.
We visited Olga Rising and I love how they decorated naturally with pumpkins and other festive colored plants. It created such a cozy Halloween feel.
10 Sustainable Halloween Decor Ideas for a Low Waste Celebration
Let’s dive into some easy, low waste, and natural ideas for decorating this Halloween.
Make Upcycled Paper Decorations
Items like cereal boxes, milk cartons, and toilet rolls can all be repurposed. Dig into the recycling box (or save them before they are thrown out) to see what materials you can use to cut out ghosts, witches, and creepy critters.
You can read my tutorial on crafting upcycled Halloween garland or watch the video!
Afterwards, depending on the materials you’ve used, the decorations can go back into the recycling box or be composted. If you’ve used materials like plastic ties or glue, break apart the item and responsibly dispose of what you can.
If your decorations are sturdy enough, save them for next year.
Make plantable decorations
Instead of using paper or cardboard, use seed paper to cut out Halloween shapes. When November rolls around, plant the paper in your garden or into pots for your windowsills, especially in colder areas.
Use pumpkins with purpose
What’s Halloween without a Jack-o’-lantern? Pumpkins, whether used for classic lanterns or other purposes, are great decorations because they’re completely natural and can be composted.
Nevertheless, great pounds of pumpkins are thrown in the trash every year, and just like plastic waste, food waste is a serious environmental issue.
Use pumpkins responsibly by using all of its parts. Roast the seeds and spice them with pumpkin spice, cayenne pepper, or whatever spice you love, to make a quick, delicious snack.
Use the insides to bake cookies, muffins, or bread. You can even serve these concoctions at parties. The skin can be eaten too!
Leaves, leaves, leaves!
‘Tis the season for leaves to fall, leaving you with a cornucopia of decorating materials. There are so many things you can do with them. Decoupage them onto bags or place mats to make seasonal totes and table settings. Spray paint them.
Cut out shapes of ghosts, pumpkins, bats, or any other seasonally appropriate character. Another option is to press leaves, then frame them between two panes of glass for an elegant accent for your wall.
Set the mood with lights
Candles go a long way towards setting the mood. Use candles with more sustainable materials like beeswax or soy wax, with cotton wicks.
Improvise candle holders by using upcycled glass bottles, mason jars, or wine bottles.
Once the wax starts dripping down the bottles your house will start to look like the Addams’ family home.
Paint mason jars black and put candles inside to create an eerie glow on porches, windowsills, or pathways.
You can decorate jars in other ways too like painting witches and goblins or leaves and pumpkins on them. Wrap them in bandages to turn them into glowing mummies. And of course you can use pumpkins to make Jack-o’-lanterns.
Reused tins make great candle holders too. These can be painted and faces cut out to make Jack-o’-lantern-style tins. When cutting up tins do so with caution, especially if you’re crafting with children. Make sure you supervise them and help them with dangerous tools and tasks.
Candles aren’t the only form of illumination. Fairy lights and electric candles inside bottles or jars work just as well (and are usually safer), and can be reused not only each Halloween, but even during other occasions like Christmas and as permanent home decor. Take away the spooks and ghouls and the candles and fairy lights create a romantic instead of a scary atmosphere.
Fall Wreaths
Make seasonal wreaths using corn husks, pine cones, twigs, and leaves. Bind them using twine made from jute, hemp, or unbleached cotton, so that the whole ensemble is made from natural materials.
Or use sturdy but flexible cuttings from your garden to twist into a wreath. Using such materials lets you dispose of it in the compost afterwards – but if it’s sturdy enough and stored properly (to avoid collecting spiders and dust), save it to use for next year.
Make decorations you can eat
If your decorations are edible, you have less waste. As mentioned, you can use pumpkin insides to make all kinds of delicious treats. Have fun with Halloween cookie cutters and a simple sugar cookie recipe. Delve into Halloween’s origins by making soul cakes – and remember the candy corn and candy apples!
Prop up a broomstick
A classic straw broom propped next to the front door will make it look like Sabrina and the Sanderson sisters are attending your party.
Once Halloween is over you can use the broom to clean up. Plus, brooms can be used for cleaning any time of year.
Books, books, books!
If you’re a big reader, scour your shelves for spooky reads and decorate your home with them. You can start a lending library during the month of Halloween with books sourced from home and the community.
Or explore secondhand bookshops for horror classics like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Haunting of Hill House, and Rosemary’s Baby, and modern reads like Bird Box and The Changeling.
And for the kids, you’re sure to find old copies of Goosebumps. This avoids waste completely as the books will just go back on your shelf or into the lending library. Or you can turn them into gifts for your guests or trick or treaters.
Set the mood with music
It’s not only lighting that sets the mood. Music plays a big part too. Compile a playlist packed with Halloween classics like Ghostbusters, Monster Mash, Season of the Witch, and I Want Candy.
And don’t forget Thriller so you can all dance like zombies. Playing sound effects like rattling chains and wailing ghosts is another fun effect. You’ll need electricity to play the music of course, but otherwise this idea is waste-free.
And now you’re ready to party, trick, and treat!
MEET THE AUTHOR
Claudia Hauter is a South African writer, copy editor, and content creator with degrees in Drama and Anthropology. She works in television managing web content. When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s walking her dog, finding small businesses and markets to support, or attracting butterflies and bees with her vegetable garden. Learn from Claudia on Instagram.
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