Rumpke Halloween Waste And Recycling Tips Halloween Recycling And Waste Tips Rumpke

Halloween Waste & Recycling Tips 2025

Updated: October 2025

Halloween might be a time for ghoulish festivities and spooky spirits, but the amount of Halloween waste produced is downright terrifying. Not to fear: Rumpke’s waste and recycling “tricks” will add more green to your Halloween and help minimize environmental impact.

Table of Contents

• Recycle Your Halloween Candy Wrappers

• Consider Natural Decorations

• Reuse Your Household Items

• DIY Costumes & Bags

• Trick-or-Treat Bag Alternatives

• Halloween Word Search!

• Donate Your Halloween Costumes

• Perform a Halloween Waste Audit

• Halloween FAQs

Recycle Your Halloween Candy Wrappers

Candy Wrappers For Halloween Waste And Recycling

On average, Americans enjoy nearly 600 million pounds of candy during the season. That’s about 3.4 pounds per person, creating nearly 2,000 pounds of waste—now that’s spooky!

And to make the scene scarier—Halloween candy wrappers aren't accepted in curbside recycling programs or drop-off locations.

But fear not!

Now there’s a way to recycle these pesky candy wrappers (not paper or foil), and you could even get your neighborhood involved. By participating in the Hefty ReNew Orange Bag Program, you can give hard-to-recycle plastics, like candy wrappers, and foam products a new home.

To date, this program has allowed Rumpke to divert 90,000 pounds of single-use plastic from the landfill!

Consider Natural Decorations

Natural Gourds And Pumpkins For Halloween Decorations

The frightening reality of in-store Halloween décor is that manufacturers mass-produce them using plastic and other human-made materials—materials that don’t always make it to either the landfill or recycling facility. Natural décor like pumpkins, varieties of squash, leaves, hay bales, flowers and dried corn can make your home just as on-theme for October. Afterward, you can compost them and give nutrients back to the earth.

Reuse Your Household Items

We all have household items that we tend to forget about, but repurposing them is a fun and inventive way to design a spine-chilling atmosphere. Fill glasses or jars with water and red or bright green food coloring. Add gummy worms or old golf balls as eyes to make them look like intoxicating witch’s brew.

Use old pillowcases, illustrate a tombstone image and stretch them over cardboard or chairs to transform your front yard into a graveyard. The possibilities are endless!

DIY Costumes & Bags

Do It Yourself Halloween Costume Made From Recycled Material

Halloween is everyone's annual excuse to dress up as someone or something fun. However, certain Halloween costumes can be a significant contributor to textile waste. Rather than buying single-use apparel, use the clothing and fabrics you already have! You can also shop for different pieces for your look at a local thrift store. Check out these great costumes straight from your recycling bin!

Instead of buying a new trick-or-treat bag every year that could be made of plastic, you can fashion other reusable materials for an eco-friendly bag.

Trick-or-Treat Bag Alternatives

  • Pillowcases
  • Tote bags
  • Backpacks
  • Drawstring bags
  • Old handbags

Want to get creative with the kids and make a lasting memory? Design customized Halloween bags together with different craft materials to design a bag with their favorite Halloween images and their name!

Halloween Word Search!

Rumpke Halloween Word Search

Download Rumpke’s Halloween Word Search for a fun, educational activity for kids and adults to learn eco-friendly Halloween tips!

⇓ Halloween Word Search

Perform a Halloween Waste Audit

A fun project for the kids: track your Halloween waste!

If you aren’t sure how much your household contributes to Halloween-related waste, monitor the quantity of waste and types of material you produce this Halloween.

  1. Have two separate areas for your Halloween-dedicated waste: trash and recycling. Make sure it’s separate from your everyday waste. 
  2. After Halloween, see which section has the largest amount: trash or recycling? 
  3. If you find more items in the trash section, plan for ways to address and cut down on waste or non-recyclables for next year.

Halloween FAQ

Candy wrappers are not accepted in curbside recycling or drop-off locations; however, you can recycle candy wrappers with the orange Hefty ReNew bags if the program exists in your community!

Encourage Kids to Recycle

To promote a greener Halloween and engage kids in the effort, communities like the Village of Granville in Ohio set up collection “monster” stations on Trick-or-Treat night to gobble up candy wrappers using the orange Hefty ReNew bags.

Halloween Collection Monster For Candy Wrapper Recycling

There are many ways to create a "Collection Monster" recycling bin, but generally, you will need:

  1. A cardboard box to serve as the monster’s head.
  2. Decorations such as eyes, teeth and other facial features made with paint, colored construction paper or markers.
  3. A large hole cut out for the mouth.
  4. An orange Hefty ReNew bag to line the inside of the box. These can be ordered or found in most retail stores.

These monster collection boxes can be placed throughout your neighborhood street during Trick-or-Treat or offered as a waste option for your Halloween party!

There are many ways to dispose of your precious pumpkin. After the Halloween fun ends, here are some ways you can use your pumpkin.

1. Cook & Eat Them

Quite easy! Eating your jack-o-lanterns is safe if well-preserved. Pumpkin flesh can be pureed and used in pies, soups, sauces and more. Rinse off the pumpkin before pureeing!

2. Place Them in the Compost

You can compost at home or check with your municipality and identify a neighborhood compost bin you can take them to. If you don’t have a compost bin available, use your yard. Find a sunny spot in the yard, slice the pumpkin into pieces and cover them with leaves for a quicker composition process.

3. Feed Them to the Animals

Cats, dogs, guinea pigs and hamsters love pumpkin seeds and small amounts of flesh. Ask your vet before serving, though! No pets? Feed them to local wildlife by leaving them in the corner of your yard or in a local park so that deer, squirrels and chipmunks can munch on them.

4. Place in the Trash Can

If there are no other options, pumpkins can be placed in a bag in your trash can. Keep in mind weight guidelines for trash pick-up in your neighborhood. Pumpkins should NOT go in your curbside yard waste or recycling containers.

1. Secure Your Halloween Candy Wrappers

On average, a single trick-or-treater produces one pound of trash. Individual candy wrappers are small, so they can easily slip our grasp and end up as litter in our neighborhoods. Ensure that wrappers are secured in your waste bin and don’t accidentally fly away. If you're in the right location, you can participate in the Hefty ReNew Orange Bag Program, which accepts candy wrappers!

2. Throw a Frightfully Eco-Friendly Halloween Bash

If you’re throwing a Halloween bash, there are plenty of ways to make it more sustainable.

  • Place collection bins in high-traffic areas of your party and be sure to clearly label them. Make recycling easy for your guests!
  • Place signs on your recycling containers so guests will easily recycle aluminum cans, glass bottles and certain cups. Don’t assume your guests know what to recycle!
  • Use biodegradable or reusable plates and cups.
  • Provide finger foods that can be eaten without plates.
  • Encourage guests to write their names on disposable cups to reuse them.
  • Plate foods in glass or recyclable containers.
  • Avoid foil roasters or disposable casserole tins.

Never place your Halloween lights in the recycling. Like recycling Christmas lights, Halloween lights will get tangled in the recycling equipment causing it to malfunction. This halts the entire recycling process. 

Rumpke drivers are on the streets every day, often working in the dark to collect trash and recycling at the curb. These drivers receive extensive training before hitting the streets. For Halloween night, parents and children should take similar precautions:

1. Be Visible

Avoid accidents by making sure children are visible in their costumes, and that masks do not hinder their sight.

2. Plan Ahead

Set clear expectations and rules for older trick-or-treaters out on their own.

3. Use Street Smarts

Always look both ways before crossing streets, and travel with a group.